


To Love a Bard

by brightstarlings (gingerpunches)



Series: wildflowers [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Affectionate Jaskier, BAMF Jaskier | Dandelion, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Protective Jaskier | Dandelion, Touch-Starved Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, affectionate Geralt, tromp to toussaint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 57,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25835959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerpunches/pseuds/brightstarlings
Summary: “You couldn’t have known,” he says. He isn’t a hindrance. Not then and not now. Never a hindrance. He wants to say that, wants to reassure him, but all that comes out is — “Jaskier.”Maybe just that name, that sweet nickname, is all that he needs to say. Since finding him under that cart, Jaskier looks the most like himself, even dressed in peasant’s clothes and with scrapes and bruises up his arms and palms. He smiles a crooked smile, one filled with that youthful spark Geralt is sure will never leave him no matter how old he gets. Geralt rests a palm on his knee, trying his best to convey the press of emotion he feels behind his teeth still going unsaid.I’m sorry. Don’t go. Let me protect you. I love you. It hits him, then, what it all means, and he hopes to the gods Jaskier will one day understand.--Or: Five times Geralt and Jaskier protect and care for each other, and one time they don't have to.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: wildflowers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1874665
Comments: 85
Kudos: 651





	1. fear for me

**Author's Note:**

> this is not a direct sequel to To Observe a Witcher, but it is a spiritual successor. i wanted to explore more on the side of what it means to protect each other, and the ways geralt and jaskier express those feelings to each other. i enjoyed the 5 + 1 format, so i replicated it here. i hope you guys enjoy this! the next update will come friday!

After the mountain, he travels south.

Maybe not necessarily towards the ever-advancing threat of Nilfgaard, but he doesn’t turn his feet away. He finds he doesn’t care, not for a long time, and should he find himself on the other end of a Black Sun blade, he knows he won’t win the fight. He doesn’t mind, so he goes south, strumming his lute as he goes.

He passes through towns and cities, earning coin and fucking maidens. Stableboys, too, when the fancy passes, but he tries to keep their faces turned away. Many know who he is, and many are willing to fall into bed with him, so he learns very quickly not to say no when the hole inside him gapes wide.

It gapes wider when patrons ask for him to play songs about the Butcher, the White Wolf, Geralt of Rivia. He never says no to them, either, learning just as quickly that his purse comes away thinner if he does. So he swallows his heartbreak and wrings from himself one last performance, over and over and over and over and over —

“You sing like you’re in love,” she says. He doesn’t know who  _ she _ is, but she’s pretty, and so far very kind. He twirls her blonde hair just a shade too dark to really be called blonde around his finger and smiles, however forced.

“I suppose I am,” he says. He really doesn’t want to do this. He’d rather she shut up and leave him alone, and if she won’t then at least ply him with sweeter words other than  _ you’re in love — _

“Is she dead?” she says. Her eyes are sad. He can’t meet them. “You sing like you’re in love, but also like she’s gone away.”

“I suppose she is,” he answers. “But not dead. She won’t die for a while.”

— over and over and over and over. Is she gone? Are you in love? Did she leave you? Have you told her yet?

Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

Gods, no. He couldn’t. Not now. Not after all that he’s done.

It’s a pattern. He goes, he sings, he composes, and no matter how far he travels, the White Wolf follows him. If he were any other version of himself, he’d be elated — Geralt, following  _ him? _ Geralt didn’t follow. But to think that he could, even for a while, even if it was just to be there, with Jaskier, with his company and his time and just to  _ stay _ —

But he doesn’t. He returns to Oxenfurt, he teaches, he finds company in the hands of men rough from working on the docks. They don’t ask many questions, and they don’t mind if he keeps the hearth low so he can close his eyes and pretend the hands sweeping down his sides are gentler, kinder, reverent in a way that is reminiscent of them passing a cloth over polished steel rather than ropes over sails. He sings about them, too, but not as kindly, and never in public; never where anyone can hear, not anymore, not with this hole in his chest and this ache in his bones and this feeling that he should have been more but wasn’t, he couldn’t be, it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t —

—  _ over and over and over and over. _

——

Months pass. He counts each one. Summer melts into fall, and with it comes more bar performances, less dances and festivals outside. He finds a small cabaret that enjoys his heartbroken singing, however forced most days, and on a particularly rainy evening as he’s taking a small break in-between performances, the most unlikely of people sits themselves down on the stool next to him.

“You can do better,” Yennefer says, flatly, and the sight of her nearly has him falling out of his seat.

Jaskier manages to swallow his fluttering heart so he appears less flustered, but only just. “If I can do better, then you most certainly can.”

She gives him an unimpressed stare. He gestures around them with his wine glass, only barely able to hold in a startled laugh.

“To what do I owe the infinite pleasure?”

“Please don’t condescend yourself,” Yennefer says coolly. “It’s beneath us both.”

“ _ You’re _ telling  _ me _ to be nicer to myself? Who are you, exactly, and what have you done to the witch I love so dearly?”

Yennefer scoffs. She produces a wine glass far finer than his own from seemingly nowhere, filled with a dark liquid he’s convinced isn’t wine. Her violet eyes pierce right through him, but where they’d normally hold contempt there, there’s something else, something that looks entirely alien to him in her gaze.

Grief. Regret. And maybe something like pity, if pity could be kind in the eyes of a sorceress. Maybe, to her, it is, and it settles him some to be on the receiving end of whatever empathy she finds for him.

He sets his glass aside and folds his arms on the bar, meeting her stare. “What brings you this far north? I never knew you to visit Oxenfurt or Novigrad without being forced.”

“Believe it or not,” she says, “I’m here for you.”

Jaskier can’t help scoffing. Her eyes sharpen, and he frowns. “Really? I can’t imagine why. I’m not particularly useful to anyone.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“I’m a bard, Yennefer, not a soldier or politician. I’m not even considered a noble anymore, if I could ever lay claim to that title, and no one in the four kingdoms cares so much about a bard to call him  _ important.  _ I travel, I sing, I teach. Tell me, Yennefer, why you find yourself in a cabaret in Oxenfurt talking to me of all fucking people before I leave you here and call the guards.”

He won’t, really. They both know this. But she sighs, and pushes her wine away, and turns to look at him fully with earnestness in her tight expression, so he turns to give her his full attention.

“You remember what happened all those months ago,” she says.

Jaskier’s heart twists. Something inside him long broken starts to hurt again, an aching, burning kind of pain, one so sharp and quick tears nearly spring to his eyes. But he’s fought this down before, so he does it again, even though Yennefer looks almost  _ sad _ to see him do so.

“I remember,” he says slowly, quietly, “my best friend lashing out at me because of something he did to  _ you.  _ He loves you, Yennefer, and I’d appreciate it if you would take your leave now.”

“But you love him,” she says, just as quiet, ignoring his weak plea to go. He knows when he’s been beat, so he simply nods, the agony growing heavier inside him by the second.

“I love him,” Jaskier admits. 

“Then I need you to do something for me.”

She stands, and for the first time since she arrived, he notices what she’s wearing. A simple dress, nothing ornate or truly noticeable, with a thin cloak and fine silk belt wrapped around her hips. It’s still black, as dark and shiny as her curly hair, but she looks more like she’s trying to blend in rather than stand out. It sets him more on edge than actually seeing her here, and she, naturally, notices.

“Come with me,” she says. She motions with her hand to follow, so he does, snatching his lute and trotting up the stairs to the cabaret’s rooms above them. The noise and chatter of the tavern dulls some as she leads him down the long hallway, but doesn’t truly fade, a constant, comforting hum that tells Jaskier he didn’t actually step into some alternate dimension where Yennefer is being  _ nice  _ to him.

Well, she could also be leading him to certain doom. These two ideas war with each other in the short time it takes her to unlock the last door at the end of the hallway and push it open.

Jaskier’s heart twists impossibly tighter. “If this is a joke —“

“No joke,” Yennefer says. She’s smiling, but it’s nearly apologetic. “I’m serious.”

“And I’m leaving,” Jaskier says flatly. He turns on his heel, waving a hand over his shoulder. “I expect something truly funny next time, but thank you, I think I’ll go get myself blind drunk and fuck the first man under forty that doesn’t look at me cross-eyed. It’s been a pleasure, have a wonderful evening!”

“Jaskier.”

His body reacts before he can help it. He freezes, a whimper crawling up his throat, every bone and muscle in his frame shaking as he fights to stay where he is. He knows that voice, he’d know it anywhere — asleep, drunk, heartbroken, lovestruck — he’d know it. He followed the owner of that voice for the better part of two decades only to have it all thrown back in his face, but to leave, to truly be done, it would take too much of himself to even  _ think _ of turning around —

_ — over and over and over and over. Is she gone? Are you in love? Did she leave you? Have you told her yet? _

Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

Although he supposes with Geralt’s hearing and Yennefer’s cue, he probably did. 

“Jaskier, I’m sorry.”

Jaskier fights to stay put. Geralt is in the hallway now, a heavy presence behind him that threatens to break him down by simply existing. He’s thought about how this would go, imagined what it would be like to finally face Geralt and see the emotion there that’d been kept hidden for nearly two decades. He’s imagined a lot of things, but encountering both Yennefer and Geralt shatters something inside him.

It only drives home how much he doesn’t fit. They’re immortal, or close to it, and he has no place beside them. He never did, not as a bard, not as a friend, not as anything more than just a  _ shoveller of shit — _

“Jaskier.”

But gods has he missed that voice. He’s missed a lot of things. Quiet company shared over a campfire, long days travelling between fishing towns and farming hamlets, nights spent waiting in the dark hoping his best friend will come back broken and dirty but alive and whole and ready to face the coming dawn again.

He’s missed Geralt. However much it hurts, however much it shatters his heart over and over  _ and over and over and over — _

“Why.”

He turns to face Geralt and Yennefer. They’re standing at the end of the hallway, an awkward amount of space between them that tells him they’re clearly staying far apart for his benefit. Geralt won’t look at him, eyes downcast, and Yennefer looks cowed for the first time in her (likely very long) life.

“I wanted to give you the benefit of having an audience,” Yennefer says, soft.

“An audience,” Jaskier says flatly. “Out of everything that’s happened — and you think I want people to see?”

“You are a bard,” she tries. An old heat is in her voice, familiar from all the years they spent ribbing each other. He can’t bring himself to rise to it even though the intimacy warms him some.

“I’m a bard,” Jaskier says. He meets Geralt’s stare even as the Witcher looks increasingly agitated at being stared at. “I’m a bard that had a friend, and now I don’t. I didn’t expect this, and quite honestly, having it forced on me is telling about the people forcing it on me. I wasn’t allowed to choose on that mountain, and now I’m not allowed to choose this as well?”

Geralt and Yennefer look at each other.

“Did  _ you _ get to choose?” Jaskier accuses her.

Yennefer nods, however small. “I did. We talked. A plan was set in place —“

“Then you don’t need me.” Jaskier turns on his heel and makes for the stairs. “Thank you for breaking my heart again, but I was just fine without you before. Clearly, you’ve found something that works, and I don’t want to be a part of it.”

It hurts more than being turned away on the mountain had. It hurts a lot more than all the times Geralt chased after Yennefer, more than all the times he woke to an empty camp or empty room, the Witcher having long abandoned him to follow whatever fate has in store for him. Geralt was never truly his, not by a very long shot, and having it shoved in his face is making it all the more clear that he never had a chance.

As if he could. As if it  _ mattered _ , as if he could stand up next to Yennefer and say that he could offer any more than a literal sorceress could. It never felt like that, before, like he was measuring up to some impossible standard, at least at the beginning — it never mattered to him, when they started travelling together, what Geralt did in his own time. But now it does matter, because a lot more than his career was sitting on the line for this. 

But it’s fine. He can have Yennefer, even if it hurts. He made a wish, and here he is reaping its rewards. They made up, they’re here together, and Jaskier desperately wishes he were anywhere but here.

He understands, now, when he isn’t wanted. Geralt had what he wished for. In a perfect world, they could have probably worked something out, but it’s clear not even that could be possible.

Surprisingly — or not — he isn’t followed. He trudges back down to the cabaret, slings his lute around, and just to spite their presence, he sings all night. He sings every song he ever composed about the White Wolf and his sorceress, sings every song about longing and lovesickness he kept locked away in his heart. No one has heard those songs, not even Priscilla, and it pains him as much as it feels like a bloodletting. 

His position at the far end of the cabaret main room affords him the perfect view of the stairs. He smiles and winks at patrons as the night wears on, but never does he truly look away from them, and neither does he care if he appears distracted. Geralt and Yennefer never leave, at least by conventional means, and it gives him some sick satisfaction that they’re possibly upstairs listening to every heartbroken word he sings, every tear he wipes away, every breathless confession that he’s too much of a coward to admit in any normal circumstances. 

Eventually, dawn comes. Patrons filter out, some going upstairs to their rooms and others out into the lightly sprinkling streets. Jaskier packs up his lute — along with the fat coin purse he collected through the night — and quietly slips up the stairs to his own room. Thankfully, Geralt and Yennefer aren’t waiting for him down the hall, so he opens the door midway down and locks it behind him. 

He doesn’t bother with a bath, or undressing fully. He sets his lute in its case at the end of the plush bed and sheds his boots before collapsing into the blankets, his throat beginning to ache almost as fiercely as his heart. His fingertips burn, too, and every muscle tugs at his bones as if he’d been holding tension in them for hours. He probably was, and for a long time sleep eludes him, even as the day starts with the sounds and smells of civilization carrying on without him.

——

Leaving takes much more courage than he’s capable of mustering after sleeping all day. Much, much more after he’s bathed and dressed, and by the time he finally does have the courage, he feels sick with anxiety and paranoia.

He knows, logically, that he probably should have leapt at the chance to hear Geralt’s apology. He’s only got so much time left, and the thought of having him back in whatever capacity is agonizing as much as it’s warming. Witnessing Geralt confessing to genuine emotion is also incredibly tempting, but he fights the urge to find out, and forces himself out into the early afternoon.

The Academy is quiet this time of day, so he crosses the campus to his rooms facing the river running around its eastern side. His desk is packed with sheet music and papers and he’s loath to leave behind the expansive wardrobe he’s built over the months, but the urge to run is too strong. So he digs out the knapsack he always carried when travelling with Geralt, stuffs it with clothes and toiletries, then ties his bedroll to it. He packs away a few notebooks filled with his more precious music into his lute case, then slings that over his shoulder, too, and locks his room behind him without a glance back.

He’s still tired from singing all night, and he probably should stop to find something to eat before setting out, but the heavy weight of Geralt and Yennefer possibly still in Oxenfurt pushes him forward. He avoids the crowded market next to the Academy and makes his way to the southern gate, where Oxenfurt’s streets are wider and he can make a quick escape out into Velen. He can find a horse in the stables to the south, then wind around the coast for a while as it suits him, stopping in beach towns too out of the way for Nilfgaard. He’s always wanted to take that vacation, so maybe now is the right excuse to slip away and get some distance from the northern kingdoms just to be safe —

He stops. People pass him by on the bridge connecting Oxenfurt’s southern gate to the mainland, horses clattering by and merchants rumbling past in carts and wagons. He nearly gets run over, but he hops out of the way at the last moment, the man driving the cart giving him a stern glare as he passes by. But Jaskier pays him no mind, glued to the spot as he is, every bone and muscle stiff as stone.

Roach stands at the end of the bridge, ears swivelling and looking anxious to go. Geralt sits astride her, and next to him, Yennefer waits patiently on her own black and white stallion.

“I said to do something funny,” Jaskier mutters. He unsticks his feet from the ground and starts forward again, resolutely looking away from them both even as he passes them by. “I said to do something funny and what do they do? This. Fucking  _ this.” _

“We can find a horse for you,” Yennefer calls. He hears their horses follow him, but instead of overtaking him, Roach ambles to his left while the as-yet unnamed stallion keeps pace to his right. Jaskier stares forward and keeps walking.

“I’ll walk,” Jaskier bites out, “if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Yennefer says breezily. And then, as if the two people he wants to see the least hadn’t ambushed him while leaving his own godsdamned city, she changes the subject, easy as ever. “Where are we off to?”

Jaskier has to fight very hard not to scream, the anger boils inside him so hot. “I don’t know. It seems I can’t be rid of you. Where are we going?”

“Wherever you go,” Geralt says. His tone is quiet, and if Jaskier knows him as well as he thought he did, a bit apprehensive. Jaskier wants to turn around and look at him desperately, but he can’t. He keeps walking, his body beginning to shake with how tensley he holds it.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to settle with not knowing,” Jaskier manages after a moment. He swings his lute out of his case and begins to strum to try and channel all this nervous, fiery energy into, his heart beating angrily in his throat and preventing him from speaking. It takes all he has not to snap it in half and jump into a river, but then he’d give Yennefer the sweet satisfaction of watching him die, and he refuses to give her such a pleasure.

So he walks, Roach and the stallion keeping easy pace with him. He begins to relax as his fingers pick across the strings, and before he fully realizes it, he’s humming. Not anything in particular, not anything his companions would know, but it soothes him some, so even as he knows it must be annoying, he doesn’t stop.

They walk for miles like that in silence. Jaskier has never gone so long without talking, and he’s positive Yennefer hasn’t either, but it satisfies him somewhat to know neither Geralt or Yennefer are comfortable breaking their silence. It keeps him going long after his feet begin to burn and his fingers begin to ache. It keeps him from bursting under the pressure of so much heated, passionate emotion building up in his chest that threatens to choke him.

His feet take him to a town that consists of nothing more than a small inn for travellers and a sheep farm across the dirt road. A stable is attached to the inn, but Jaskier doesn’t wait for either Geralt or Yennefer when they enter to put up their horses. He keeps marching right into the inn, purchases one room for himself, and shuts himself inside it before they can follow him. Locking it doesn’t do much against them, but it eases him some, and for the rest of the night he isn’t bothered.

That isn’t to say he’s  _ comfortable.  _ Because he can hear them talking in the room next to his, hushed arguments that, on more than one occasion throughout the night, leaves one or both of them nearly shouting. It makes him smile, in a sort of sick way, that even though Geralt has what he wants, it isn’t always happy.

And then he kicks himself and buries his head under the pillows. Yennefer wasn’t competition. She wasn’t even playing the same game — to compare himself to her when she had no equal nearly sends him to tears.

(Well, it  _ does.  _ But he pretends that the room next to his doesn’t get quiet when he starts to cry, if only because he knows Geralt can hear him.)

In the morning, he buys food for himself, eating quietly while the other two do as well across the table from him. He pays for himself, he gathers his things, and while they go back to the stables for their horses, he continues on, lute in his hands and a song on his lips. They catch up to him, naturally, but he pays them no mind, allowing his mind to wander as the sun peeks through the dreary grey clouds and birds begin to sing along with him.

A week passes like that. He has no real destination in mind, and now that his plan to avoid both objects of his affection and frustration refuse to leave him, he doesn’t have much in the way of an escape route. He thinks, briefly, about turning right around and marching back to Oxenfurt — at least there they’ll have to be more discreet, and Jaskier could just hide out on the Academy campus for the rest of his natural life if that’s what it took — but he missed the calming effect nature had on him. It’s been a while since he was out amongst the trees, and to hear his voice echo through the forest or across river valleys was always a novelty that never wore off.

The first week comes and goes, and by the second Jaskier is running out of places to go. He sings every night in every tavern and inn he stops in, singing to himself as well as to his broken heart as drunk patrons cheer him on. There’s always an unsettling amount of attention pinned on him from where Geralt and Yennefer sit at the back of each bar every night, but by the third, he finds he doesn’t care. Every tavern wants him to sing about love and heartbreak, so he does, pouring every drop of his soul into each song he can muster up to fit the request.

_ Is she gone? Are you in love? Did she leave you? Have you told her yet? _

_ Yes. Yes. Yes. No. _

Was love supposed to be this way? Was he supposed to sing it to the stars every night? Was Geralt supposed to know before he could properly confess it, and was it supposed to break him every time he couldn’t, every time he was asked to sing about it, every time he was asked to drown in it?

Was it supposed to hurt this much? Was it supposed to feel like losing, again and again, over and over  _ and over and over and over and over? _

Was it supposed to be like this? Where did he go wrong? What could he do? Could the world please,  _ please _ just ask him to  _ stop? _

——

He doesn’t find an inn on the tenth day. So he finds a suitable place to camp between a copse of trees that’s a sufficient distance from the road, then begins dropping his bags and looking for firewood.

Neither Yennefer or Geralt bother him. They break camp, though Yennefer produces a tent that’s eerily similar to the one she had on the dragon hunt and sets it up with a snap of her fingers. Jaskier hates it, nearly screaming at the sight of it — he knows what will happen in that tent when night comes. 

But he clamps it all down. Swallows it up. His heart beats an unnaturally fast rhythm, but his anger boils hotter, so he throws himself into building a fire and finding a place far enough from the tent to not feel choked by it. He gets part way through organizing things in his knapsack when a gentle hand touches his shoulder, making him jump up and yelp, his heart jackrabbiting against his sternum.

“What,” Jaskier chokes out. Yennefer is looking at him with one raised brow, then motions with the hand she touched him with to the tent. 

“You sleep there,” she says. “I’ll take the bedroll.”

Jaskier scoffs. “The first thing you say to me all week, and I’m not even sure if it’s supposed to be a joke.”

Yennefer has to visibly fight the urge to roll her eyes. It nearly makes him laugh, but her discomfort is more satisfying. “I’m simply giving you an opportunity. You were correct, when you said you didn’t have a choice earlier.”

Jaskier narrows his eyes at her. “You’ve never said I’ve been right. About anything.”

“Well,” she says, looking plain and earnest, “maybe I’d like to try.”

He looks between her and Geralt standing awkwardly near Roach. The other man hasn’t spoken a word since the first day, just like Yennefer, studiously keeping his comments to himself as Jaskier slowly morphed from humming to singing to chattering again like he always did as the week wore on. He hadn’t even sighed or hummed, not even as Jaskier’s singing sometimes got loud or his rambling got increasingly circuitous. He’d been silent, kind, even, in his lack of response, if ignoring someone you once called a friend could be kind.

Jaskier glances between them one last time, then scoops up his lute case and knapsack. He walks into the tent slowly, as if it may eat him, only moderately surprised that it’s much more spacious on the inside than out. A large bed dominates the space further in, with a dresser and wardrobe and vanity encircling it. Instead of the plush grass of their campsite, there’s rugs and furs under his boots, and there are oil lamps hanging from the tent poles, bathing the linen walls and dark furniture in warm, yellow hues.

He dumps his things on one side of the bed and collapses on the other. The bed is soft, and smells of clean washed sheets. He kicks off his boots and wiggles out of his clothes, leaving them all in a heap on the floor to take care of later. His feet really do hurt, and to sleep in luxury again after going a week without it is quite nice. He can still hear the chirring of insects outside and the hush of leaves as the wind blows, too, enveloping him and making his eyes droop in exhaustion.

And then the bed dips, and he squawks as he tries to desperately claw for a blanket to wrap himself in as he shoots up to his feet. But it’s only Geralt — as if Geralt could be an  _ only  _ — with Jaskier’s lute case in one hand and his knapsack in the other. Jaskier watches with an increasingly annoyed quip burning hot on his tongue as Geralt sets them aside and sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, his eyes seemingly incapable of landing on any one place around the room.

“Out,” Jaskier finally manages. His voice is dry, cracking at the end, so he swallows and tries again. “Get out before I start singing songs you really hate, Geralt.”

Geralt doesn’t look too concerned. But he does look afraid, almost, as if any Witcher could, and while he doesn’t move, he looks close to bolting. 

“I’m not leaving,” he says quietly.

Jaskier takes a deep breath. Two. Then he kicks his clothes out of the way and lays back down, pulling all the blankets over himself and turning away so his back is to Geralt. The oil lamps flame low —  _ igni _ , probably — dousing the room in a quieter yellow, easier on the eyes as the sun begins to set against the white linen sheets of the tent.

Geralt doesn’t move. He probably won’t until Jaskier is asleep, so he’s bound and determined  _ not _ to. He’s pissed and he’s tired and he has to think of a place to go tomorrow, some place with an inn so he can finally get some fucking privacy from these people, but his mind draws a blank and he desperately wishes he’d brought his map with him so he could at least throw a knife blind and have a place to go.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says quietly. It startles him, enough to realize that he’d been dozing. He stiffens but stays put, trying desperately just to breathe.

“Jaskier,” Geralt tries again, tone soft, understanding, like water-smoothe stones in a gentle river, “I’m sorry.”

He wants to believe it. He wants to believe that Geralt has any positive feelings for him, that all these years spent travelling meant something to him. They’d grown close, despite Geralt’s initial resistance, and while he never used the word  _ friend,  _ it was always unspoken. Geralt had few friends, and to be allowed into that chosen circle had felt like an honor. Witchers didn’t have friends, but Geralt did, and to be a part of that, to be cared for and accomodated even when Geralt was perfectly fine on his own and had been for a  _ century — _

To be cast out of it had been heartbreak. Over and over and over and over, his heart had been broken with every word Geralt had spit out that day. He’d ripped it from Jaskier’s chest and quite thoroughly stomped on it, leaving him to bleed and wither. He hadn’t even collected his things — just his lute and his bag, and made his way back to Oxenfurt.

He wonders if Geralt had followed him. He wonders if Geralt had been there all this time, simply waiting to spring this  _ trap, _ or whatever the fuck it was. Yennefer was involved, so it had to be especially bad.

It had to be. She’d never been nice to him. She had what she wanted, and now the both of them were dangling it in his face just to torture him.

“Why is Yennefer here?”

The question must throw Geralt. He can hear the other man shift, the bed creaking and leather whispering against itself. Geralt sighs, long through his nose, and Jaskier can’t take it anymore.

“You have to know,” Jaskier grits out. He throws back the blankets and turns to face the Witcher. He’s bare-chested and shaking, he knows, he can feel it, but he doesn’t care if this is what Geralt sees. He’s tired of hiding, of being asked to be okay with stuffing his feelings down and suffering for it. He’s a man, and he’s done pretending that these things don’t  _ hurt _ him.

Geralt looks at him like he knows. He doesn’t speak, but he nods, just a little, never looking away like he would have a moment earlier.

Jaskier’s heart breaks. “Then why? Why bring  _ her —“  _ he gestures towards the front of the tent “— when you could have just as easily left me at Oxenfurt? Why drive me away? Why come to rub it in my face at all? Haven’t you done enough?”

Anger flashes briefly in Geralt’s eyes, but it’s carefully hidden away, replaced by unfamiliar guilt. “I brought her because I’m on a contract, but I needed to see you. You would have run away if you saw me. Seeing her made you curious.”

Jaskier gapes. “So you used her to get to me.”

“It was her idea.”

He doesn’t know if Geralt is laughing at him or pitying him. He sinks his head into his hands, tugging at his hair, trying to decide if tossing himself into the nearest lake to be devoured by drowners is easier than trying to navigate this conversation.

“So why,” he bites out, “are you sitting here, with her outside, following me around when I’d much rather be getting piss drunk in a bar at home?”

“Because,” Geralt says, quiet, yielding to Jaskier’s anger like it was something he’d always known how to do, “you deserve some answers. I was unfair to you, and to expect you to just come back after a few months had gone by wasn’t fair. I found Yen first, and to say our talk went worse than this is an understatement.”

Jaskier snorts, but doesn’t look up. “That’s the most I’ve heard you say without being coerced.”

“I have more to say, if you’ll hear me.”

He does. He loves Geralt’s voice, loves the rough monotone that expresses more than people think. He loves his dry humor and his myriad of sighs and grunts — he loves the little ways Geralt expresses himself without saying much. His voice is a unique one, one Jaskier could always pick out in a loud, crowded room, and to hear it again after so many months going without it is like a balm to sun-kissed skin.

He nods. To say that he missed Geralt wouldn’t even scratch the surface of what he feels. He missed him, but he also loves him, and hates him, and wishes this Witcher never came crawling back if he knew what was good for him. He didn’t scorn Jaskier like a lover, but it felt like it, and to be here, now, surrounded by a lover Geralt prefers to have, stings more than the separation had.

Geralt breathes deep through his nose. He turns more fully to face Jaskier, bringing one leg up onto the bed and folding his hands in his lap. His armor gleams in the lamplight, the silver studs catching and glittering like sunlight off rippling water, vulnerable to the smallest of disturbances. He looks small, which he never has been, even when he came back from a hunt broken and bloody.

Jaskier simply watches him. Waits. He’s said his piece for now, has laid himself bare this past week enough to know he can’t hide any longer. 

It’s over. Let Geralt break his heart one last time — at least now it’ll be on gentler terms.

“I know how you feel about Yennefer,” Geralt starts quietly. Jaskier scoffs, but Geralt keeps going. “You made it apparent enough on the mountain. I bound her to me, and that is a mistake I will continue to pay for, but I need you to know we aren’t together. Like that.”

Jaskier scoffs again. “What you do in your own time is of no consequence to me, Geralt.”

“It is of consequence, because it matters to you.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation anymore,” Jaskier says flatly. “Go, or I’ll really start singing.”

“You love me.”

Jaskier’s teeth click as he snaps his jaw closed. He can’t look at Geralt, can’t imagine the disgust that must be there. He doesn’t sound disgusted, his words whispered as if their mere existence will scare Jaskier away. A little awe-struck, if Geralt knows how to be awed by anything, but Jaskier knows what a good liar Geralt really is.

But there’s no use in hiding. He’s tired, suddenly, more exhausted from merely existing than running from Geralt and Yennefer for a whole week even though they’ve been right there the entire time.

“Yes,” Jaskier says. Resigned. Let fate do what she will to him — at least now he can say yes to her final question. “I do. Love you.”

“For how long?”

“Does it matter?” Jaskier snaps. He finally looks at Geralt, and the Witcher doesn’t shy away. “Why should it? I love easily, I always have, and yet  _ you  _ won’t leave my heart. I’ve been in love with so many people and handled the heartbreak, every time, over and over because I had to. But  _ you. You _ won’t leave, and I have a feeling I’ll always love you.

“So please,” Jaskier says, quieter, tired, everything bleeding out of him all at once like a bad, mortal wound, “please leave. I want you to be happy, and if that happiness is with Yennefer, then please. Leave me, and don’t scream at me as you go.”

Geralt watches him carefully. He used to find such watchfulness endearing, like Geralt had a hard time understanding his intentions. He never had much, at least not violent ones, and to be looked at by Geralt was always a gift. Being  _ seen _ was a gift. Geralt saw right through him and understood, but even that, in the end, had been one more cruel twist of the knife, hadn’t it?

Geralt watches him, yellow eyes turning soft. He gets up, rounding the end of the bed and settling in front of Jaskier like he hadn’t just been told to go. Jaskier stares at him, a likely odd look on his face, as Geralt reaches out with an upturned hand.

“I’d like to stay,” he says quietly. “I’d like  _ you _ to stay. If you want.”

Jaskier blinks. He looks down at Geralt’s hand, at the offer being held out to him, at the olive branch this Witcher is willing to give him. Jaskier stares at it, imagining the calluses and scars underneath his leather glove, imagining all the things those hands have done. Terrible, bloody things, but kind things too, like this, like the things he wants to see if he takes it.

“Why,” Jaskier asks instead. “She’s sitting out there on my bedroll and you’re in here, talking to me.”

“I love her,” Geralt says quietly. “But not like that. Not like you, Jaskier.”

The room spins. He’s confident Geralt can hear the stutter of his heart as it beats itself against his ribs. “Me.”

Geralt’s eyes wrinkle, his expression turning wry. “You.”

“Why?”

“Because power isn’t love,” Geralt says. “Because I can give Yennefer many things, but she’s destined for a fate far greater than mine. I’m a Witcher, Jaskier, and while she knows that, she doesn’t understand. My Path isn’t hers to follow.”

Jaskier swallows. His throat is suddenly dry, and his body refuses to move. “But me,” he says. He points at himself, at his lute, at Geralt and back again. It’s more than just the two of them and the music. It’s twenty years of travelling together, of learning more about each other than any other being on the Continent. He’s confident he’s never spent more time with another person than he has with Geralt, and he’s more than confident it’s the same for Geralt, too.

“You,” Geralt says, and he smiles, just a little, a quirk of the corner of his mouth and a light in his eyes that speaks more than he ever could. “You, Jaskier. I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner, that I took what you felt and crushed it. You don’t have to forgive me, but I need you to know. That it isn’t just you.”

“The mountain,” Jaskier starts. Is this real? Is this  _ happening? _

“I was angry at myself,” Geralt says. “It’s an excuse. Angry at what I’d done to Yennefer. I took it out on you because I thought I’d be better alone. I’m — I’m learning that maybe I wasn’t. That I’m not.”

“You  _ broke _ me,” Jaskier hisses. Anger boils up again, rearing its ugly, familiar head. “You could have said anything, and I’d have stayed, but sending me away? Geralt, you  _ left _ me, you didn’t even allow me to say  _ goodbye —“ _

“I know,” Geralt says, low and soothing. “I know. I relive that day every moment I’m awake, Jaskier.”

He says his name so quietly, with so much sorrow and yearning. It  _ hurts,  _ it tugs at something long buried after months of suppression, it hurts and it feels so good, too, like finally slotting into place after a long time left wandering.

“Don’t,” Jaskier whimpers. “Don’t come crashing into my life again trying to make it all better —“

“I won’t. If you don’t want me. But I do, Jaskier. I’m sorry. I know it isn’t enough, but let me —“

He takes Geralt’s hand and yanks him forward. The Witcher comes willingly, wrapping his arms around him and resting his chin on the crown of his head. Jaskier buries his face in hard leather and cries, for once unbothered by the hiccups and sobs bouncing up his throat. He’d hide them, usually, so no one could hear, so  _ Geralt _ couldn’t hear, however futile. But he can’t, not now, not with everything laid out between them for the first time since meeting each other —

“I love you,” Geralt says quietly. He sounds strange, like he’s holding back some unfathomable emotion, so Jaskier clings to him tighter. Geralt grunts something painful, but returns the embrace just as fiercely. “Jaskier, please —“

“I’ll go,” Jaskier says, through snot and tears and the shake of his body as he cries. “Don’t leave. Please don’t. Not again.”

“No.” Geralt scoops him up, laying him back on the sheets with a gentle touch that’s unfamiliar but welcome. Jaskier doesn’t let him go, not for a long time, Geralt’s armor warming with the press of his skin against it. “No. I won’t. I’ll stay.”

Jaskier nods. He feels Geralt press a soft kiss to his hair, then rises, and his eyes are shinier and brighter than normal. He lifts the blankets up and tucks Jaskier in as if he were a child, but the intention is deeper than that, more than that. He wants Jaskier to rest, to truly find some sleep after being run ragged for so many months as his broken heart tried to keep him going. He’s asking for Jaskier to be vulnerable again, and Jaskier complies, scrubbing his face against the fine sheets and finding a position that’s comfortable but offers a good view of the rest of the space.

Geralt extinguishes the oil lamps with a twist of his wrist, plunging the tent into a warm darkness as the sun disappears, but he doesn’t leave. He picks up Jaskier’s things, carefully folding his clothes and setting everything on the dresser nearby. He picks up a chair and sets it next to Jaskier’s side of the bed, settling into it with the creak and groan of leather armor, his swords clinking together and a deep sigh leaving him.

Jaskier reaches out. His fingers find Geralt’s bare ones, rough and worn, but familiar. He tangles their fingers together and falls asleep like that, realizing only as he drops off that Geralt’s eyes were shiny with tears.

——

He wakes to the smell of dirt.

His face is pressed into it, damp and cold and without much texture besides grit. Leaves crackle around him as he tries to move, his limbs aching something fierce like he ran a marathon — his back, too, like a horse kicked him, or he spent hours bent over his desk back at the Academy. He moves slowly and still his muscles twinge, so he stops, breathing deeply to steady the shaking vibrating up his bones, yet even still he feels weak and dizzy. He curls his fingers in the dirt, and those ache, too. 

From what, he isn’t sure. He’s not even sure he’s even  _ here,  _ though his nose fills with the smell of rain on thirsty earth and something rotting not too far away. He blinks his eyes open and it’s dark, the sky a hazy blue with the rise of morning still hours away. Stars prick the fabric of night, but only barely visible through the still-full branches of the trees around him. When he glances around himself, he doesn’t recognize where he is, only that the wood around him is deep and dark and silent.

Panic sets itself deep in his gut. His heart thumps quicker, and for a brief moment, he feels sick, but he swallows down the wetness building in his mouth. Sitting up helps, even though his body still burns and pangs. The forest is empty even of morning birdsong, the silence making his ears ring.

“Alright,” he says to himself. He looks down at his hands — his palms are scraped and bloody, and dirt cakes under his fingernails. His clothes fair not much better, and he can feel dampness on his side, like tacky, warm blood, though whatever wound he may have doesn’t hurt. “Alright. Just think of where you were before —“

— A tavern, maybe? He remembers one at least. In Oxenfurt, he thinks, because — yes, he’d been performing. Like always, like every night since that horrid trek up the mountain. Maybe not the smartest of choices, to dive right back into drinking and other vices, but he needed the attention. Needed it like air, like it was the only thing keeping him from drowning. Eyes and ears and sweet words are what he thrived on, and if he couldn’t get it where he wanted it, the next best thing was the thirst of an anonymous crowd —

But only maybe. He remembers a tavern but the specifics are blurred. He’s not even sure the decor is right in his mind; it could’ve been a sailor’s pit for all he knew. No gilded chandeliers or rickety stools stood out in his foggy memory, nor do the faces of his dear patrons. He always remembered faces, always had a talent for memorizing even the finest of features, but when he tries to recall where and who he’d been with, his skull gives a sharp pang. 

“Useless,” he mumbles bitterly. “Useless and utterly unwanted —“

_ Don’t say that. _

He startles, whipping around to look behind him. Nothing catches his eye in the dark, and yet he’s sure he heard a voice. All he can hear now is the quiet, even though just a moment before, that low, commanding tone had been right behind him. He swallows around his thick tongue and tries to maneuver himself into a shallow crouch as quietly as possible, but the bracken underfoot crunches too loud in the silent dark.

“Just a voice.” He swallows and manages to stand on trembling legs. He twists in place, looking all around him, feeling more and more like he’s being watched, but not in the good, fine way a bard should. 

He’s nowhere, he realizes, nowhere he recognizes and nowhere near civilization. Nothing peers at him through the trees, nothing that he can see as his eyes adjust to the dark. A breeze caresses the backs of his hands and his breath puffs out of him in a haze, but the adrenaline keeps him from feeling its cold fingers even as he begins to shiver.

“Remember what he taught you,” he mumbles. He takes a deep, steadying breath, feeling for a moment a brief respite from the panic gripping his insides. He looks up, searching for the north star. “You know where you are by where you’ve been —“

The smell of rot gets worse as he stumbles in the dark. He claps a hand over his mouth, battling back stinging tears as they build at the corners of his eyes. He’s smelled this before, in caves and basements and in the middle of sun-baked fields.

A dead body. Somewhere near. Close to him as he grasps at trees with his other hand as he tries desperately not to trip. Gods, this has to be a nightmare, there has to be something  _ wrong — _

And then a twig snaps. He whips around again, leaves and branches rustling around him. The dark swivels, the shadows of shadows of trees closing in on him, swallowing him as he moves, looming like a great big —

Eyes. Two of them. Just little pinpricks, little stars of red, floating light. Far away — a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pair floating far too high above the ground to be anything but something inhuman. He freezes, locked in that distant stare, every muscle and bone in his body going entirely still.

Sick panic rises again, clenching around his stomach and setting his limbs alight. Fight or flight washes over him in a cold shiver and for one sweet, blissful moment he has control of his body. He takes a step back, crouching down into a loose stance as if facing a wild animal, his heartbeat thundering in his ears despite the silence.

He wants to run. Every atom of his being screams for him to, but he can’t. Another, more animal, more primal, part of him tells his body to not show his back to this pair of eyes even if it kills him.

And it will. Kill him. Whatever this is, it most certainly will.

_ Maybe. But not now. Not yet. _

He slaps both hands over his mouth, sucking in a breath and holding it. The sound of his skin hitting itself is loud in the dark, but the creature — because that is what it is, it surely must be, nothing that huge could ever be humanoid — doesn’t move. It watches from so far away he could blink and possibly not be able to find those eyes again. 

_ You would. _

Bile rises up his throat.

_ They always do. _

He takes a step back. Leaves crunch. He takes another, and then, the eyes move.

The sound the creature makes as it overtakes him is thunderous. Every instinct screams at him to not turn around, to keep his eyes on the threat even as it bears down, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t want to watch it, doesn’t want to  _ see,  _ so he turns as its form grows more palpable in the shade of the shadows engulfing it and runs as fast as he can.

He doesn’t know if it catches him quickly or if he ran for miles. Either way, it snatches him up, pinning him down to the ground and growling low in his ear. He feels the thud of feet next to his body and yet two small, almost delicate hands hold him down, one pressing his face into the dirt and the other on his shoulder, as if it was unafraid of him squirming to break free.

_ You won’t.  _

The voice is close. Impossibly close. Like it shared the same space as his panicked, scattered thoughts — like it commanded the space from his own mind as if it owned it.

_ They always run.  _ He fights the grasp on him, kicking and thrashing and not too overcome with pride to admit that he may be crying —  _ They do. But you stared me down. You looked  _ back.

“Please,” he begs. Where had he been before this? Was this real? How did he get here? What  _ was  _ this? “Please. Let me go, please —“

_ You cut the feeding short. Try again, little flower, and maybe you’ll get away. _

——

He’s in bed.

Geralt is beside him. The sheets are warm, both from the pleasant morning and their bodies sharing the same space. He doesn’t remember the Witcher joining him but it doesn’t matter — he doesn’t care anymore.

He’d been understood. Embraced, even, by the one man he thought he’d lost forever. Geralt was a hard man to interpret — was an even harder man to confess to — but the ease with which he’d done so warms him more thoroughly than any embrace ever could. He rolls over and feels strong arms tighten around him, and he smiles at the instinctiveness of Geralt doing so in his sleep.

Because he  _ is _ sleeping. A rarity on its own, especially now. Jaskier reaches up and carefully pushes some flyaways from Geralt’s face, reveling in the warmth of his skin and the flutter of his eyelids as he dreams. The tent is bathed in diffused morning light, making the Witcher appear softer than he is, but even then Jaskier isn’t fooled.

This man is soft all the time. For poor townsfolk and young children and even cats as they hiss and spit at him. He’s soft for Jaskier, too, especially now in this moment. Soft for Jaskier’s trust, his protection, the comfort he provides in his own right. They’ve known each other for two decades and Geralt lies here like they’ve spent every morning of that time together just like this, just as quiet and blissful.

Relaxed. Vulnerable. Trusting in the safety being near each other provides, and that is what sets his heart racing above all else. Because Geralt  _ trusts _ him. Trusts him with his vulnerability, trusts him with the soft, yielding core of him, with the tenderness a Witcher could never afford and yet he offers it just the same —

——

— he screams, but for what he doesn’t know. The trees bounce the pained, sharp sound of himself back at him, ringing scared and wounded in his ears. The creature bears down, putting its entire weight on him, crushing him, merging him with the earth, the soil swallowing him as wooden teeth sprout from the dirt around him like great big jaws surfacing from the deep water of the ocean —

——

— as Jaskier has. He’s given a vulnerability and Jaskier cradles it close like all the handfuls of others Geralt has given him over the course of their friendship. They’re precious things to be guarded forever and always, and if it takes the whole of his heart to protect them even from Geralt’s cruelest of moments —

——

_ “Geralt! Geralt! Geralt,  _ please —!”

Has he been screaming that name the whole time?

_ You have. _

How long has it been since he started?

_ A long, long while. _

Will Geralt come? Had he been alone? Was he really somewhere else and this was just a nightmare, just a figment of his tired, heartbroken subconscious?

_ Maybe. Rest a while, and we will see together. _

  
  


——

Geralt is so warm. His body is a furnace and yet it isn’t uncomfortable. Their skin slides together in dry, lazy comfort, asking for nothing more or less, and it’s all he’s wanted. 

Just this. This moment to be allowed, to be allowed to touch and feel. To be felt, too, but not in body or in carnal sin — but to be  _ heard _ . Geralt heard him and he was here and he was giving what Jaskier has only dreamed of —

  
  


——

_ Just dream. That’s it, like that. Of his hands and kind, sparse words. Of what could have been had he not tossed you away. You aren’t garbage, Dandelion. You’re a sweet flower he shouldn’t have passed by.  _

_ But I didn’t. I didn’t pass you by, Dandelion. My sweet flower, my little weed. You smell so delicious, like this, squirming in the dirt, my little Dandelion — _

——

“Jaskier?”

——

Geralt?

——

_ “Jaskier!” _

_ —— _

The forest fills with an inhuman screech far louder than anything he’s ever heard. It shakes him to the very bone, and all at once the weight pressing him into the gaping maw of the earth disappears. The sound of hooves crash and thump around him as the creature rises, followed by a grunt and the unmistakable slide of a blade sinking into flesh. Again, his ears are nearly deafened by the scream the beast releases, but it also fills him with sudden energy, and he scrambles away before he can be trampled underfoot.

Flames ignite behind him, casting the immediate surroundings in sharp, hot relief of orange and red and white — also casting the shadow of the beast that had held him. He watches as its shadow writhes against the blade sunk deep into its side, watches as it collapses on the deer-like legs holding up the human-like torso attached to it. The beast has horns like a moose and is twice the size of a rock troll, and when it falls to the ground with a dying call that vibrates him all the way down to his core, it does so in a great big  _ boom _ that shakes the ground. He fumbles in the sudden darkness, trying to get his limbs under himself so he can get  _ away,  _ but then a hand closes around his bicep and yanks him back, tugging another yell up his throat. 

“Jaskier,” that voice says again. “Jaskier, stop squirming —“

“Let me go!” He decidedly  _ doesn’t _ stop squirming. He scrapes and scratches at the hands trying to get a proper hold of him, pushing back against the barrel chest pressing against him and kicking at whatever part of this man he can reach. Even as the familiar smell of sword oil and leather surrounds him, he fights, leading to his attacker grappling him down to the ground.

“I said to let me go!” he shouts.

“And I said to fucking stop!” A hand wrenches his wrist behind his back, and as quickly as it started, their scuffle ends as his body twinges in pain at the sharp movement. A body holds him down, but gingerly, as if afraid of truly hurting him. 

And then he places the smell. The voice. The tavern and the night spent performing —

“Geralt,” he breathes.

“Hm,” the Witcher replies. He releases Jaskier’s wrist, standing with a gloved palm held out to help him up. Jaskier takes it after a long moment spent taking in the other man, looking up at him, at the gleam of the moon on his white hair and the sharp relief of his swords over his shoulder.

“What,” he says as he stands, groaning at the ever-growing pain in his side, “was  _ that.  _ One moment I’m in a tavern and then the next I’m having this incredibly vivid dream —“

“A leech,” Geralt rumbles. “From a witch. You were performing and then suddenly stopped and walked out. I was in the stables when someone thought to find me.”

“Was that,” Jaskier tries. He swallows, grips his doublet, feels the warm patch of blood on his right side anew. Geralt is near, pressing close as if afraid to leave him, looking down with concern wrinkling his brow. Jaskier doesn’t know what to think of this — is this a dream? Was what he saw his reality? Is this an elaborate lie conjured up to make him feel safe in the assumption that Geralt will always save him?

“Was that…?” Geralt says. His tone is low, nearly afraid of shattering the quiet around them. Behind him Jaskier can hear the crackling of the dead creature as  _ igni _ eats away at its corpse.

“I saw a vision,” Jaskier says. “Of something — of something I want very badly. But I don’t know if that was real or if  _ this _ is real. I don’t even remember where we are.”

Geralt’s expression clears some. “This is real. We’re outside Rinde, in a hunting village.”

“But the vision —“

“Is just that,” Geralt says softly. Gloved hands come up and cradle Jaskier’s elbows, hovering as if afraid to touch him. “The leech did it. They feed on strong emotions.”

Jaskier squeezes the hands hovering near him. His memory is slowly coming back to him as the dream fades away, taking with it the comforting warmth having Geralt so close had brought. The tavern he’d been in solidifies: a warm, packed room, bargoers singing and clanging their tankards on tabletops as they kept up with the rhythm of Jaskier’s voice. It wasn’t a rich place, but it was a homely place, and he feels warm just thinking about it.

(Geralt had been there, too. At his own table, hidden in the back, giving him a view of the entire single-room tavern. He remembers Geralt slipping out to see to Roach but that is the end of it — he doesn’t remember what overtook him to cause him to leave.)

Geralt’s fingers gliding lightly over his injured side brings him back. Jaskier flinches but the Witcher pays no heed, tugging up his doublet to get a better look.

“Let me take a look when we get back,” Geralt says quietly. “After I take care of this.”

He nods to the creature burning behind them. Jaskier swallows and nods.

“Please do. That was quite possibly the most terrifying experience I’ve endured.”

“Hm.” 

A strange look crosses Geralt’s face. It could be a play of the light from the fire, but he looks pained, as if Jaskier’s torment was his own. He steps away and in a practiced movement casts  _ igni,  _ but even turned away, that expression sticks behind Jaskier’s eyelids more than the sickly sweet vision had.

Now that there’s light, Jaskier can take in what attacked him more clearly. Even after spending several minutes in the magical grips of Geralt’s spell, the creature’s body is surprisingly intact — it’s very nearly a centaur, if centaurs were monsters made of wood and vines and with a black pit where a face should be. Its legs are long and stocky, thicker than a pine trunk, but the arms sticking out of the humanoid half are thin and delicate. Jaskier follows Geralt around the burning thing, taking it in, but the longer he looks, the more he feels it pressing him down into the maw rising out of the earth.

He looks away. He watches Geralt’s back, at the wisps of hair catching in the sword harness across his back. The studs on his armor gleam in the firelight, winking like little stars across black leather. He wonders how he could have forgotten this man when there’s so much about him he wants to absorb and never forget.

The fire dies as the creature burns to embers. Geralt douses it in dirt kicked over it with the side of his boot, smothering it until only white smoke rises into the sky. The blanket of night has risen, turning blue and pink and orange, but the sun hasn’t shown her face just yet. Just the stars, slowly disappearing as day approaches, his impromptu guide fading away like it always does.

Roach stands a distance away, swinging her tail and looking for all the world like she’d rather be anywhere else. Geralt holds out his hand and with his help, Jaskier steps up into the stirrup. Twisting hurts, his entire body aching, but he manages it, and Geralt climbs up behind him, settling into the saddle gingerly. He urges Roach on, leading her into a slow canter that doesn’t jostle them too much.

The quiet begins to get to him. “I’m alright,” Jaskier says. He refuses to call his tone petulant, but Geralt is being oddly silent, even for him. 

“You nearly weren’t,” Geralt says quietly. 

The vision comes back unbidden.  _ Dandelion _ , the creature had called him.  _ My sweet flower, my weed. _

“It knew me.” He can barely whisper, the feeling that overcomes him is so cold. “It called me Dandelion, Geralt. It knew what I wanted.”

What he  _ wants.  _ Desperately and with an unbridled passion. He wakes every morning wishing things were different, and they were, to a point — they had found each other after the mountain. The creature wasn’t wrong, hadn’t fabricated everything he’d seen in his vision. Geralt had apologized. Geralt is truly remorseful. Jaskier had, after a fashion, fallen asleep with Geralt waiting beside him, though he hadn’t known it that fateful night. He’d woken up to the Witcher sleeping in a chair, guarding the door, an unspoken promise to never go anywhere without him again. He’d laid there for a long time watching Geralt sleep, promising to himself, too, to never go.

But the creature had twisted his memories. Had made it a fantasy, something so far beyond what it was and what they will ever be. Geralt had Yennefer, and while Jaskier was happy enough travelling with the Witcher on his Path, he knew where he sat in the totem pole of importance.

Squarely at the top. Important, but never a foundation. Never more than a fleeting friendship in the long, anguished life of a Witcher.

“It knew you,” Geralt says, startling Jaskier out of his thoughts. “But it didn’t understand. It had the wrong flower, for one.”

“Dandelion isn’t wrong,” Jaskier argues. A smile twitches at his lips.

“But Buttercup is better,” Geralt says, and oh, is this Witcher  _ teasing?  _ It warms him more thoroughly than any fire, sending gooseflesh up his arms. He hopes Roach’s hoofbeats disguise the thundering of his heart as it throws itself against his ribcage. 

Geralt seems pleased with himself, though for what, Jaskier can’t place. Jaskier hadn’t wandered far while under the control of the leech, and in only a few short minutes, they arrive at a town that he recognizes. He remembers riding up here only a day ago, the townsfolk speaking of a monster that lured young men and women into the woods to never be seen again. He supposes they took care of it now — or, at least, a major symptom — and he relaxes back against the armored chest behind him. 

He manages to dismount Roach without killing himself, Geralt keeping a steady hand on him the whole way down. His side burns something fierce — something punctured him, he’s feeling it now, but he still can’t remember what. When they get into the well-lit tavern, Jaskier is able to finally look down at himself and see the damage his trip through the woods had caused.

“Oh, gods,” he sighs. “I paid good coin for this!”

“Nevermind the gash in your side.”

Jaskier lifts the hem of his doublet. It’s heavy and soaked with his blood, dying the fine teal fabric a rusty black. It seeps down the right leg of his trousers, and when he braves to look underneath it, he feels suddenly dizzy.

“Here,” Geralt says quietly. He catches Jaskier before he can tip over and presses a clean bar rag to his side. Pain shoots up his spine and down his leg, making him weak — suddenly he can feel how much blood he’s lost.

“Geralt,” he says. The room spins — a strong arm wraps around his back. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Hold on to me,” Geralt says. He stoops, and without a word, picks Jaskier up like he weighs nothing. Jaskier scrambles, the room tilting and his stomach lurching — he’d really rather not vomit on his best friend, thank you — but then Geralt is thumping down the hall separating the tavern from the inn, and it takes all Jaskier has to clench his teeth against the building saliva in the back of his throat. 

Geralt noses open a door with his boot and gently, avoiding his wound, sets Jaskier down on the sole bed in the room. It’s a small room, smaller than most inn rooms, but it spins just like the others, so Jaskier turns his face and presses it into a pillow. He hears Geralt shed his sword harness and armor, then the rustle of their bags being gone through, and then after a bout of tense silence, the bed dips with the Witcher’s weight.

It’s so much like the vision suddenly it hurts to even try and react. Geralt is here, so close and yet not close enough, his gentle, calloused fingers unbuttoning his doublet and pushing it off his shoulders. He slips a hand underneath Jaskier’s ribs to lift it out from under him and tries very carefully not to catch the scabbing wounds on Jaskier’s palms as he pulls his arms out of the sleeves. He very well could have cut the damn thing off — but he didn’t. 

Because it was his. Because Jaskier complained about it. Because he  _ heard  _ him.

“This may sting,” Geralt murmurs. A cold, damp cloth replaces the bar rag at his side, and oh does it sting when it does. Jaskier tries not to squirm but he can’t help it — he twists, and a gentle but firm hand holds his hips down so he doesn’t move far.

“Now I know how you feel,” Jaskier grumbles. He manages to blink an eye open to peer down at the Witcher as he works. “Being pinned down by a rather dashing man and having your wounds cleaned is quite novel.”

Geralt snorts. Either he gets the pass or doesn’t, and Jaskier doesn’t know which is worse. “I don’t need you to do that for me.”

“Ah, but you do! Your scars would look even more ugly without me, darling.”

This time, Geralt flicks a glare up at him. Jaskier smiles through the pain, falling into the old tried and true habit of deflecting his discomfort and internalizing trauma through humour.

“Only kidding,” he says. “I won’t include those bits in my next ballad, I promise.”

“You have to live long enough to write the next one.”

It’s said teasingly, with a hint of a smile on Geralt’s lips, and yet, after tonight, after seeing such a twisted vision and then seeing the real concern on the  _ real _ Geralt’s face — he isn’t sure. Geralt had fallen easily into step after reuniting, had adjusted quickly to Jaskier’s particular brand of deflection. And yet such a small comment elicits in him a giant well of guilt that he can’t quite beat down.

The eyes spell it out for him. Geralt’s yellow gaze speaks volumes of his fear and concern, and only now, in the firelight crackling in the hearth beside them, does he finally see it. 

Maybe there’s a chance, someday. Maybe that vision wasn’t such a falsehood afterall.

“I’m sorry for wandering off,” he murmurs. He reaches down to gently squeeze Geralt’s wrist, making the Witcher stop in his cleaning.

“Not your fault,” he says. His expression is soft. Vulnerable. It crumples, showing true, unfiltered panic for a split second before he hides it again. “Just — let me do this. So it doesn’t scar.”

Jaskier’s throat is suddenly too dry to speak, so he simply nods. Geralt nods once as well, then bends back over Jaskier’s side, dabbing a sweet-smelling concoction across his wound, cleaning the caked-on blood with every swipe. 

Geralt works quickly and with practice learned over decades of performing the same task. Jaskier peers down to watch, relieved to find that the wound on his side was only a grazing one. A couple inches long, horizontal across the bottom of his ribs as if in glancing. The creature likely attacked him and missed, or maybe it happened as he was stumbling through the woods — whatever it is, Geralt packs a poultice over it, smelling sweet and sharp in equal measures, then wraps his middle in a roll of clean linen bandages. He sits back, allowing Jaskier room to get up if he so wished, putting their things away and tossing the rags at their packs alongside his doublet to be cleaned later.

But he doesn’t go far. He hovers, seemingly unable to leave more than two feet of space between himself and Jaskier. He seems almost worried, and the thought eases any lingering fears Jaskier has about this being a dream. 

This Witcher is real. He was shy and surly, quiet and teasing — a far sight better than the oddly forward Geralt of his vision. He doesn’t know why that Geralt would ever be real outside his fantasies, or why he would believe it, but then again, it had been a vision to leech emotion from him. It’d been  _ designed  _ to be believable.

He reaches out to touch Geralt’s forearm. The Witcher blinks at him, somehow unable to look at his face, his eyes glued to the spot under the bandages where Jaskier’s wound is. Jaskier grips his hands then and  _ makes _ him look, somehow still startled by the raw emotion hidden in that yellow stare when it finally jumps up to his face.

“Thank you,” Jaskier says. “I mean that sincerely.”

Geralt’s mouth twists. “I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“You saved me. Don’t argue.”

“It could have killed you —“

“And it didn’t,” Jaskier says quickly, over the pounding of his heart and the self degradation he hears in Geralt’s tone. “Please, just — thank you. Take it just this once, Geralt.”

Geralt nods once, however small. He gets up, but doesn’t go far, wetting a rag in the wash basin across the room before returning and taking up Jaskier’s hands in his lap to clean. 

He recognizes anxiety when he sees it, even in a Witcher, so he lets it be. Geralt is as gentle with his palms as he was with his side, taking care not to press too hard or go against the grain of scrapes across the heels of his hands. It stings, especially so when he switches to rubbing yarrow across his skin, the relief the extract brings only coming when Geralt’s calloused thumbs pause in applying it. 

Sunlight begins to peek through the sheer curtains, and with it comes the sudden exhaustion of being awake all night and being attacked by giant unknowable creatures. When Geralt is satisfied enough with his hands, he tugs them away, giving the Witcher a raised brow at the amused grin tugging at his lips.

“Some of us have been chased by monsters all night,” he says.

“And some of us have killed those monsters,” Geralt says back. “Maybe  _ some _ of us should take better care.”

Jaskier flaps a hand. It doesn’t hurt anymore, and it warms him. “Bah, why should I? I have you, dear Geralt. My knight in black armor.”

He doesn’t want to see the expression on Geralt’s face when he says that, so he turns towards the head of the bed to pull down the blankets. Geralt rises behind him, hovering incessantly, but he lets Jaskier dress down and climb into bed on his own. The dizziness the blood loss had brought comes back after laying down, but when he squeezes his eyes shut, it abates, and he sighs.

“I really do thank you,” he says quietly. “For all of it.”

He hears a chair being lifted and set closer to the edge of the bed, and then a weight like an arm stretching out towards him. Geralt doesn’t speak, but his presence is answer enough, and he falls asleep that way with the knowledge that Geralt is there, a silent protector in the safety of growing morning light.


	2. for you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im a little too excited to stick to my original update schedule, so im going to be posting one chapter a day until this is completed. let me know what you think!

“Oh, Geralt! You could have told me you wanted to participate in the Tourney!”

He’d had his suspicions. There weren’t many places down south that would actively tolerate a Witcher — few and far between were there people that would even host one. People were becoming stingy with their coin, and while Geralt’s reputation has improved (with no small help from Jaskier, thank you very much), the Butcher was still turned away at town gates for simply what he was.

Which was a whole other issue. Jaskier has gotten into his fair share of bar fights, but more and more are they becoming less about his own social standing and more about Geralt’s. The Witcher can stand up for himself, especially where his physical prowess was concerned, but should he toe the line and  _ verbally  _ defend himself —

Well. Let’s just say Jaskier has gotten very good at combating the shit people decide to throw at Geralt, and while Geralt would be outwardly displeased with this, the soft looks he gives Jaskier when the bard does defend him is enough to keep him going. 

(That’s a whole other thing. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it, because acknowledging it means putting a name to it, and they’re still only months after finding each other again. The mountain still stings sometimes, still pulls at his heartstrings and leaves him aching. He doesn’t want to hope. He doesn’t. Hope meant there was something there, and oh he wishes so desperately that there was —)

But the north was still recovering from a long winter and the contracts were becoming fewer and farther in between. They’d had no choice, and besides, it wasn’t like Jaskier was going to complain. Toussaint was warm, the people were warmer, and somehow the whole of their populace — while there were its outliers — seemed to treat Geralt like a celebrity rather than a Witcher. 

It’s nice. It helps some that the people around them are giddy and excited, filling the air with an energy that makes Jaskier eager to perform. Placards from all sorts of noble houses snap in the air, strung proudly across polished wooden poles and atop the Tourney arena. The breeze smells of wildflowers and spiced food, and past the arena horses thunder across the jousting lane, a bone-deep beat accompanied by the clang and jangle of knights in plate armor.

Jaskier takes a deep, steadying breath. Oh, how he’s missed the Tourney. He’s only been one time, and he was alone. To be here with Geralt was the sweet honey icing on this delectable, mouth-watering cake.

Geralt sighs, long suffering. He, however, does not feel the same it seems.

“I don’t want to participate,” he grumbles. He jangles as well, dressed in his leather armor with his sword harness across his chest, but quietly, as a Witcher should. He stands out like a bad joke in a well-rehearsed theatre production, all black and grey, his golden eyes casting about in the bright afternoon sun. 

He looks for all the world like he’d rather be elbow deep in monster guts. Jaskier scoffs — people look at them, at  _ Geralt,  _ with an awe and reverence absent in the eyes of northern townsfolk. Roach ambles behind them, a far sight from the armored steeds stamping up and down the dirt paths between the crowds of people, yet all Jaskier sees is Geralt and Roach for what they are.

“Please,” Jaskier says. “We both know you could work circles around these pompous idiots in your sleep. That’s why we’re here, aren’t we?”

Geralt rolls his eyes. “Like I said— I don’t want to participate.”

“And yet here you are.” Jaskier gestures around them, and he can feel Geralt’s gaze watching him as he spins on his heel to take it all in. Even the tents housing the participants of the Tourney are bright and beautiful, shades of purples and blues and yellows and everything in between. Toussaint is a rainbow of colors, and Jasker loves it. He spins back around to face Geralt, raising a challenging brow. “If we aren’t here of your own volition — which you should, mind, you’re a man, not a dog — then why are we here?”

Geralt’s expression flattens. This is a familiar way he keeps his features arranged: carefully blank so as to dissuade anyone’s ire. Being in control of one’s emotions was a Witcher’s specialty, and to see it now, surrounded by such color and excitement, concerns him. 

“A contract?” Jaskier asks quietly.

Geralt dips his chin in a barely perceptible nod. His lip twists into a frown, and instead of following the flow of foot traffic around the Tourney grounds — instead of doing anything at all to take in the sights and smells and sounds Jaskier so desperately wants to absorb — he pushes Jaskier down a side path with a gentle hand on his waist. Jaskier trots ahead, following the path up a small hill to where a line of fine tents sit under the shade of a column of trees, and  _ oh _ , he finally understands.

“Were you hired as a knight?”

Geralt grunts. “Shut up,” he hisses. “All that matters is the coin.”

“Geralt,” Jaskier bites back, “don’t ever devalue yourself like that. If it won’t be too much of a hit to your precious ego —”

“My  _ ego _ has nothing to do with this —”

“Then why in the seven hells are we here! We can still turn around and say we got lost in a storm! I don’t know, don’t look at me like that, you big idiot, turn around and let’s find a selkimore to kill —”

“I’m afraid he’s already spoken for,” a gentle voice cuts in, and Jaskier snaps his mouth closed so fast his teeth click together. He stops in his tracks and Geralt bumps into him, sighing with annoyance, and further behind him, Roach huffs.

In front of them is a huge tent, easily big enough to hold a whole noble bedroom’s worth of heavy furniture and finery. The entrance is tied closed with thick golden ropes, yet under the woven awning held up by two ornately carved poles is a thin, beautiful woman, her auburn hair braided back, not a strand out of place. She holds herself rather severely, and Jaskier wonders how she hasn’t thrown her back out with how she puffs her chest out with the amount of peacocking she’s doing for a simple introduction.

Still, he falls into a shallow bow, showing her reverence where her presence demands it. He may be a Viscount in his own right, but a bard is still a bard.

“My Lady,” he says. He dares not to reach out to her, and when he glances up, her placid expression is proof enough he made the correct decision. “Master Jaskier and Master Geralt at your service.”

He straightens, and with it comes a raised brow on her angled features. And then she looks at Geralt like Jaskier isn’t standing right beside him, and immediately her attitude change is palpable. 

“Witcher,” she says, “how kind of you to join me. Guillard, please see to his horse.”

A man appears beside her, bows, and genty takes the reins from Geralt. Geralt glares at the man hard enough to convey the certain doom awaiting him should Roach be mistreated, and then the man scurries off, Roach snorting her displeasure the entire way.

“Our bags are on our horse,” Jaskier says. “I sincerely hope —”

“Come, you must be famished,” the woman interrupts. She motions behind her to her tent. “I have refreshments inside, Witcher, if you please.”

Anger leaps up Jaskier’s throat. It heats his face, too, probably an embarrassing shade of red, yet he tamps it down. This is Geralt’s contract. If the coin is that good that he can ignore a noble’s snotty attitude, so can Jaskier, even though it burns him from the inside out to keep his chagrin contained. He can do it, gods damn it all. He  _ can _ . It’s not like she’s insulting him directly. She’s merely overlooking his entire existence —

“I don’t think you’ve properly introduced yourself to my friend and I,” Geralt says. His voice is a monotone, and if Jaskier didn’t know better, he’d almost think Geralt was bored. But when he looks at Geralt, he can see the fury underlying his carefully blank features pulling at his mouth and brow.

The woman blinks like she’d been slapped. She straightens as if she could possibly make herself taller than Geralt. “Excuse me?”

“I’ll take your contract,” Geralt says, “on the condition that you don’t treat Jaskier like you were just now. Where I go, he goes.”

The warmth that settles in Jaskier’s stomach is hotter and more comforting than the anger overtaking him just before. The woman blinks again, looking between the two of them like she’s seeing them for the first time, and slowly, like she’s being forced to, she nods. 

“Madam Anais,” she says after a very long time. Since meeting her a mere two minutes ago, she finally relaxes her shoulders, and with a dip of her chin, she curtsies. Not a lot, not like the grand things in the courts she attends for the Duchess, but it’s enough. Jasker returns the curtsy with another bow as is customary, and Geralt does as well, though barely. Social norms don’t apply to him in the same way, and yet again Jaskier is witness to the subhuman image this woman is projecting on him even subconsciously.

That indiscriminate anger bubbles up again. “Come inside,” Madam Anais says, and yet all Jaskier can hear is the thundering of his blood in his ears. 

Until Geralt touches him with a warm hand on his side. A gentle touch, one that brings them dangerously close to each other. Geralt looks down at him and with a small twitch of his lips.

“Just for a few days,” Geralt says quietly.

Jaskier doesn’t have to try to smile. “Can we go to a vineyard after this? I don’t think I’ve tried a freshly pressed wine before.”

Geralt’s eyes grow warm. He nods once, then with a squeeze of his fingers around Jaskier’s wrist, steps ahead of him and after Madam Anais into her tent. Jaskier swallows a shaky breath — Geralt touched him, and smiled at him, and promised a trip away from here purely for Jaskier’s benefit because he  _ knows _ , oh gods he  _ knows _ how much this woman is grating at him. It should make him happy, and it does, but it also twists his gut around itself in embarrassment. 

He follows after Geralt, emerging into the tent that looks more like an overdressed foyer. There’s rugs under his feet covering dark wooden pallets that match the mahogany furniture, and in one corner is an ornate vanity with all sorts of perfumes and oils in glittering glass bottles. It’s as close to the comfort of her own mansion this Madam will come to out here on the Tourney grounds, and while Jasker secretly covets it — what he would give to travel in such decadence — it itches at him like a scab. 

Geralt looks equally uncomfortable surrounded by such delicate holdings. Madam Anais gestures for them both to sit across from her at a low table set with fine china and a plate of fresh fruit she likely won’t touch, even though the sight of food after a long trip makes Jaskier’s stomach clench.

“I’m asking that you perform for me during the Tourney,” Madam Anais says. She sits primly at the edge of her seat, never leaning back or dropping her posture, a perfect image of breeding and lineage. “I understand you don’t normally accept such contracts, but I’m willing to offer a large sum for your services.”

She’s looking squarely at Geralt, pinning him down with her grey-eyed stare. Jaskier makes himself comfortable as this portion of negotiation begins, pointedly taking a crisp red apple from the plate and noisily biting into it. 

“I don’t,” Geralt says, and oh, if looks could kill. “But if what you offered in your letter is what you’re offering now —”

“Three thousand crowns,” Madam Anais says quickly. “Win the Tourney, and it’s yours.”

Jaskier nearly chokes. “Three  _ thousand —” _

“We’ll take it.” Geralt throws a quick look at Jaskier, exuding as much  _ shut the fuck up  _ energy Jaskier has ever possibly felt. Jaskier swallows his bite of apple without dying a dishonorable death, trying very hard not to look crass about it even as Madam Anais looks at him with a disdainful frown. 

She seems to work past Jaskier’s hacking and smiles a serene, pretty smile, the first she’s had one on her face since meeting her. “Fantastic. I imagine you already know, but the Tourney begins tomorrow. You’re lucky, Witcher, for arriving when you did.”

“Are we?” Jaskier wheezes.

Her smile turns predatory. “I think you also know what will happen should you lose. I have a lot on the line, Witcher.”

Geralt, even though he gets up rather abruptly, isn’t cowed. His expression is as impassive as ever, and with a gentle yank, he pulls Jaskier up with a hand around his bicep. “We’ll see you before the festivities begin,” he says. “Until then, Madam.”

“Madam Anais,” Madam Anais reminds, a sharp note in her voice.

Geralt ignores her. Jaskier leads the way out of the tent, hurrying only because he isn’t quite convinced she’s human and he’d really like to not be eaten today, thank you very much. Geralt follows closely behind, urging Jaskier back down the path they came to rejoin the ambling crowds.

“What does she have dangling in front of her that she needs a  _ Witcher _ to win the Tourney?” Jaskier hisses. Geralt keeps pushing him along, and his ire only dies a little when he realizes Geralt is moving them towards a stable tent. 

“I never asked,” Geralt says. “I’m not about to look coin in the face and say no.”

“You really must be losing it. If she could, she’d have eaten us.”

Geralt snorts. “You, maybe.”

Jaskier rounds on him, unable to keep back his frustration any longer. Didn’t Geralt  _ get _ it?! “Listen, you! This isn’t a joke! There’s something else going on here, and no amount of bribery from you can make me forget it! Please tell me you see it too.”

Geralt blinks. They’ve stopped at the side of the path, out of the way of most townsfolk walking beside them, yet they still get some odd looks. Geralt more than Jaskier, and isn’t that the stark, ugly reminder he needs right now?

And then Geralt’s posture relaxes just a bit. His expression softens, and he drops his voice so just the two of them can hear him.

“I’m not an idiot," he says. “I know she wants more from me than a fight.”

It should ease the tension, because at least Geralt is admitting it. At least he  _ understands _ , because if Jaskier has to be the only one around here that gets why a noble woman like Madam Anais would stoop so low to hire a Witcher — to hire  _ Geralt  _ — he was going to scream.

But it doesn’t ease anything. He feels keyed up somehow, like they’re being watched or walking into a trap. Geralt grips his shoulder and squeezes in small comfort and yet Jaskier takes very little from it, feeling jittery and on edge the entire walk to their provided tent with the rest of the participating knights. Theirs is just as large and grand as the others, no hint of discrimination against them, and still Jaskier can’t shake the feeling that they’ve agreed to something far more sinister than an act of service.

——

The tent isn’t as furnished as Madam Anais’, but there’s a bed and a chest, and it sits on pallets like the others do, making the ground flat and even. The night passes in relative quiet, with many participants in the Tourney retiring early, which gives Jaskier some semblance of security from being so exposed and surrounded.

Especially since being around so many people is like having a target on their backs. Geralt quietly places a  _ yrden _ around the tent, a protection as much as an early warning system. Should anything happen, whatever — or whoever — bothers them will make enough noise breaking through the spell to give them time to react.

Jaskier doesn’t sleep much that night even with the protection. Toussaint is warm even at night, so he and Geralt toss the blankets off the bed and only use the linen sheets for covers, but while Geralt dozes in relative peace, Jaskier worries. He’s seen a Tourney, has witnessed the things knights will do to each other in the name of their patrons and houses. They round up monsters and fight them one-on-one; they form teams of four and pummel each other into submission. He isn’t so worried about the horse races or the jousting — to his knowledge, all Madam Anais wants is victory in the arena — but Geralt being a Witcher means his opponents will fight him harder as if they have something more to prove by beating a mutant. 

Morning comes far too quickly. Geralt rises, and to keep some semblance of normalcy, Jaskier pretends to sleep in a while. He knows it’s futile — Geralt is not easily fooled — but the Witcher gives him this moment anyway. He dresses in his leather trousers and jerkin, tying them tightly, leaving just enough slack for him to stretch his shoulders wide. And then he dons the leather chestpiece and vambraces, taking the time to make sure they fit in place just right, a rote routine achieved over a century of completing it every day. 

Jaskier gets up when Geralt reaches for his sword harness. The Witcher raises an amused brow at him, saying nothing until Jaskier makes a face.

“I know you’re worried,” he says softly.

His face heats almost instantly. He fidgets for a moment, twisting the thin sheet between his fists. Their eyes find each other despite the gnawing inside Jaskier’s gut.

“They won’t go easy on you,” Jaskier says. “Because you’re a Witcher.”

Geralt shrugs one shoulder. He ties on his pauldrons last, adjusting the strap of his sword harness so it fits inside the gap between the right shoulder and the collar of his chest piece.

“I can handle myself.”

Jaskier scoffs. “I know you can. That isn’t the point. They may treat you marginally better than the north does, but they’re still nasty, and the moment you turn your back on them they’ll —“

“Jaskier,” Geralt says. His low tone commands Jaskier’s silence but not out of anger or frustration. He sits next to Jaskier on the bed, looking at him like he was a damn fool for worrying even though they both know he won’t stop.

Jaskier can’t  _ take it.  _ “I just —“ He stops. He twists around and places a hand on Geralt’s arm, as comforting and as close as he’ll allow himself. The studs of his armor are cool but underneath the leather, Geralt is warm, just like his half-lidded gaze. “Please, be careful. I’d rather not fix you up from sword wounds if I can.”

Geralt’s gloved palm slides over his hand, sending shivers up his arms and down his spine. His heart pounds an unsteady beat, loud enough he’s sure Geralt can hear, and yet the Witcher simply looks at him like he’s silly for worrying.

“I will,” Geralt says simply. And then he gets up and steps outside the tent, giving Jaskier privacy to dress before joining him. Jaskier does, however shakily, and follows Geralt out to find breakfast before the Tourney starts.

Vendors of all sorts are posted along the lane leading up to the public entrance of the arena, selling smoked meats and grilled fish and fresh fruit. Geralt eats a light meal of bread and sausage, his eyes roaming across the crowds beginning to enter the arena, lingering on knights that split off to the participant’s entrance. Jaskier isn’t hungry — he hasn’t been since taking that apple from Madam Anais — and feels rather out of place as Geralt steers them closer to the group of swordsmen gathering in the shaded entrance below the stands.

“Witcher,” one of them calls, and oh, here they go. “I’m surprised they let you in at all, looking like that.”

Geralt doesn't immediately answer. He looks down at himself, dressed in light armor compared to the clanking masses these men have ensconced themselves in. Jaskier would laugh if it wouldn’t scare him that  _ this _ is what Geralt is up against.

“Ready for battle, just like you,” Geralt eventually says. 

That itching feeling overcomes Jaskier again, and he desperately wishes he hadn’t left his lute in the tent. His fingers need something to pick at besides the hem of his doublet.

“I meant your freak eyes,” the knight says. His comrades glance between each other, but with their helmets held underneath their arms, their grins are clearly visible. “You should run along, mutt, if you know what’s good for you. Wouldn’t want to cut down a mindless dog if I have to.”

He can’t take it anymore. They’re the same, just like the lot of them, just like every single gods-fearing stain on this earth. They don’t care that the person standing before them has been killing monsters four times his size, alone, since before they were a twinkle in their mother’s eye — they don’t care that, if Geralt so chose, he could cut them all down right now and not bat an eye. Toussaint had a higher tolerance for him, but it was only just, and Jaskier suddenly feels like he’s the only one on the Continent that sees Geralt for  _ who _ he is instead of  _ what _ he is.

“This  _ freak _ has killed things of your children’s worst nightmares,” Jaskier suddenly snaps. Geralt — and every knight loitering in the shade — turns their attention on him like they’re only just noticing he’s there. Jaskier doesn’t intend on being forgotten. “I’d be careful about how you speak to him.”

The knight laughs, a nasty, halting snort accompanied by the giggles of his friends. “Or what? You’ll smite me? Have you ever held anything heavier than your cock, boy?”

“Seems the Witcher has a little protector,” another knight says, elbowing his friends.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, low in warning. “Don’t.”

“No!” he exclaims. “I’m tired of it! These people deride you and expect the world of you in the same breath! If they were to defeat you, they’d pride themselves on their prowess in besting a Witcher in battle, but should you win, it’s nothing but the luck of a beast that allowed you the fortitude to best them. They don’t respect you, and being expected to put up with it is the salt in the wound.”

He doesn’t even see the shocked faces of the knights encircling them, his vision is so red — he sees nothing except the slack-jawed expression on Geralt’s normally inexpressive face. It awes him that he’s somehow caught Geralt by surprise, but it also hurts, because this is something he  _ lives with. _

Every hour of every day of every year — for over one hundred years Geralt has lived with this. He certainly doesn’t need Jaskier’s protection, especially concerning matters such as this. But Jaskier has put up with it, too, has suffered in silence while watching the man he loves deflect derision with the practice of someone who has long grown accustomed to it. He is practiced in the art if acceptance, but that doesn’t mean Jaskier has to be.

Even as he shakes and his breath comes in short pants, Jaskier straightens to his full height and musters as much quiet fury as he can, channelling it into his voice and expression. “Every single one of you,” he says, pointing at each knight with one shaking finger, dressed as they are in the feathers and colors of their noble houses, disgusting peacocks that they are, “should be  _ ashamed.  _ You flaunt your moralistic ideals as a knight for as long as it takes to earn your coin and warmth for the night, but the moment someone you perceive is beneath you is within your sights, all trappings of your station suddenly flee from you.

You’re all such honorable figures,” he hisses. “If only your people could see you now — would they hold you with such high regard if they did?”

He doesn’t need to see their faces to know the answer. No one would care to see Geralt treated this way. No one would even lift an eyelash to bat in his direction. In fact, they’d join in, and Jaskier knows that for an absolute fact. The world is cruel and unforgiving, but especially, and with unbridled focus, was it cruel to a Witcher.

He doesn’t realize he’s stormed off until a gentle hand is tugging at his sleeve. He finally blinks and looks around, finding himself standing at the edge of the lake the Tourney arena was built next to.

Very little people mingle here, but it’s Geralt that his eyes fall on. The Witcher looks far from angry, or exasperated or embarrassed. He looks — he looks hurt, if Jaskier is reading the tilt of his brow right; like something has lodged rather uncomfortably in his chest and he needs help getting it out.

Jaskier feels the same, suddenly. But it isn’t the ire of an angry friend that fuels him, but the love he has for one, and oh how he wishes he could just express it. It beats against his ribs like a startled bird, begging to be let out, but he just — he  _ can’t. _

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier mumbles. He turns to face Geralt fully, unable to meet his eyes. “You have a contract to complete and I’m ruining it —“

“You’re not ruining anything,” Geralt says quietly. “You’re right, you know.”

“But it’s not about needing to be right!” Jaskier gestures to the whole of Geralt, and the Witcher’s expression tightens. “You don’t need protecting — you don’t need someone defending your honor, as it were. Especially from me. Snapping at some knights that more than likely can destroy both our reputations wasn’t very smart of me.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt sighs. 

“Don’t sigh at me.”

Geralt’s expression loosens into something resembling fond exasperation. “If I forgive you, will you come back and watch the fight?”

Jaskier fumes. “I don’t want to watch them gang up on you!”

“They will or they won’t.” Geralt shrugs. “You can’t stop them.”

“That’s my point,” Jaskier grumbles. “You also can’t expect me to just sit on the sidelines and watch.”

Geralt moves closer, his features softening. Jaskier freezes — this isn’t the first time Geralt has shared such intimate space with him — but it is the first time Geralt has reached out with a gentle hand and tugged him into a hug.

His body reacts before he can help it. The leather armor under his cheek is warm, and without realizing it he relaxes against it. The span of Geralt’s chest isn’t wide enough for him to strain stretching his arms around, and even with his swords, Jaskier manages to squeeze Geralt close.

“I’ll be fine,” Geralt murmurs. His breath is warm in Jaskier’s hair as he tugs Jaskier closer with his arm around his shoulders. 

“You’d better be,” Jaskier says around his heart in his throat. “There’s a lot of people who would love to say they bested you.”

Geralt scoffs. “Probably. They’ll have to go through you first, won’t they?”

It’s far from patronizing. In fact, it’s the opposite — it’s as earnest Geralt has ever been, even though in reality, he was simply facing down a couple armed men in a mock battle where no one would die. He was in as little danger as a Witcher could possibly be while still holding a sword in his hand, and still he reassures Jaskier with the depth of his being anyway. 

There’s no way he can hide his aching heart now. Geralt has to know; or, at least, he has an inkling. It’d be impossible now to not notice, and Jaskier desperately hopes that Geralt will at least let him down gently. Because he can’t take this softness now, can’t grasp the fullness of Geralt’s understanding for his worry. To love and protect was the whole of Jaskier. It was the reason he composed and sang and travelled leagues across the Continent with the sole man that needed his company the least. 

And yet, maybe that’s where he had it wrong. Geralt didn’t need him. It was quite apparent, now, that he wanted Jaskier here, and that more than anything he could have done or said makes his weak little heart flutter high into the heavens.

Gods, is he doomed.

He hugs Geralt tight, unable, for the first time in a while, to create the useless chatter that usually protected his soft heart from Geralt’s prying. The Witcher squeezes him, and with one last lingering look, parts from the embrace, but not without lingering long enough to give Jaskier a meaningful look. 

And then he’s off, meandering back through the thigh-high reeds to the main path. Jaskier watches him for just long enough to swallow his rabbiting heartbeat and then stumbles after him, ignoring the strange looks he gets as he goes. Instead of following Geralt to the participant entrance, he finds a seat amongst the crowd, managing to slot himself between two women in the shade of the arena’s eastern wall. 

With a flourish of trumpets and drum beats, and a short but inspiring speech from the Duchess — who is flanked by a row of nobles and courtesans, one of which Jaskier is unsurprised to see is Madam Anais — the knights enter the arena. One by one they march out like a line of fluorescent birds, plumes and mantles bouncing in the wind, a shiny procession of metal and smiles. At the end of the line is Geralt, a far different sight to the knights preceding him, a black and white shadow keeping step behind them. He bristles with only the hilts of his swords, the only pomp and circumstance a Witcher allows. There is no flash or posturing, no colors to fly or house to uphold — just a man here for coin, and the pride Jaskier feels at seeing him swells so much he’s close to bursting.

The crowds around Jaskier rise and whoop and holler, but all he can do is watch as the knights come to a stop in the center of the ring and then, as if practiced, bow to the Duchess. Geralt does as well, following the lead of the men beside him. He’s quiet and polite and doing just as he should, and still below the din of the cheering crowds Jaskier can hear the whispers.

Things like  _ mutant _ and  _ freak _ and  _ mutt _ and  _ beast.  _ Geralt is none of those things, looks like nothing more than just who he is. A Witcher with nothing to prove, and yet he has to because of what he was.

It angers him all over again. All he can do is sit and watch as, with a flick of her wrist, the Duchess starts the fight.

The shining knights turn on each other instantly. This is a battle for honor and status, and short of death, they spare nothing. Swords come flashing out in a wail of metal on metal, and quickly it becomes clear how fast alliances can be made on a battlefield. 

Unsurprisingly, Geralt is left alone. His sword is quicker at landing hits, parrying and shaking off blows that hit far too close to the soft spots in his armor. Swordsman his opponents may be, but it becomes glaringly apparent whom among them has held a blade for over a century, and Geralt wastes no time claiming space in the arena for himself. 

The first knight to fall is one in red and orange. He was slow in the start of the fight and didn’t manage to establish himself as an ally to the three groups of two that opposed him or the Witcher that had ground to defend. He falls to his knee with a hand raised in the air in surrender when he’s quickly bested, and like the turn of a tide, the other three groups turn on each other. The second group of men are dressed in opposing shades of green and purple, and again, like shifting sands, the remaining two groups test their blades against each other, never lingering on one another for too long as they trade blows with Geralt.

The third group falls to their knees after a longer battle. They succumb to exhaustion more than anything, and yet a portion of the audience still cheers when they go down. That leaves only two knights in blue and yellow, and then Geralt, who is quickly turned on.

However, they underestimate him. He’s as nimble as he is strong, and with a clang of blades, he disarms the knight in blue before swatting away the yellow knight’s incoming blow. The blue knight’s sword goes flying, landing in the dirt with a clamber of metal on stone and packed earth, leaving him open to a quick flurry of blows from Geralt’s sword and pommel to force him into surrender. The crowd murmurs and boos, but some still cheer, leaving only Geralt facing down the yellow knight as he rights himself and charges.

With a yell, the knight swings, but unlike the drawn-out fights the knights had engaged in before — things meant to show off their prowess rather than their wit in battle — Geralt is practiced in the brevity of life or death. He twirls on his feet in a tight pirouette, and with the upswing, catches the knight across the armored carapace of his metal back. The knight stumbles, wrong-footed from the blow and his momentum, leaving him open to a quick and short strike to his sword hand. Geralt doesn’t maim him, instead using the pommel to disarm him, then kicks the fallen sword away as the man howls and clutches his hand.

He, too, falls to his knees in surrender without a second’s thought thrown towards his fallen sword. Geralt stands amongst the panting, exhausted knights, surrounded by plumes of bright color and the sharp reflection of the sun off shifting armor. He sheaths his sword, looks up at the Duchess, and with a practiced movement, he bows.

Unlike before, where the crowd had booed and sneered whenever Geralt landed a successful hit, people surge out of their seats in a din of shouts and sound. The Duchess, in a show of polite solidarity, curtsies to the victor, then gestures for the arena to be cleared and for Geralt to come up and accept his prize.

It’s such a surreal experience Jaskier wonders if it’s happening at all. Geralt was liked here, much more than he was in the realms to the north, but he was still just a beast to these people. A hound to hunt the monsters and nothing more, and yet here they were, shouting and singing their praises. Geralt had bested the noble knights in a show of restraint and poise — nothing more than a muzzled dog at the best of times. His teeth had been filed down and his ugliness had been hazed over by the traditions of the Tourney, but still they will turn on him once this was over, and it makes Jaskier sick. 

He scrambles out of his seat and squeezes through the throngs of people to the exit before anyone can beat him to it. He manages to clamber down the stairs without killing himself, then trots around the arena until he finds the nobles’ entrance, taking up a spot in the shade of a maple tree to wait for Geralt to return. 

Horns bleat a tune in the arena, and faintly over the shouts of the audience Jaskier can hear the Duchess speaking. Shortly after she stops, a stream of nobles click and clack gracefully down the stairs of the nobles’ entrance, a shimmer of fine silk and feathers and lace that give him odd looks before continuing on. The Duchess appears as well, though she is quickly whisked off to her tents, leaving the last of the nobles behind her to congregate in the shade.

And then, after what feels like an eternity of being not-so-subtly glared at, Geralt emerges at the end of the line of nobles. He has a wreath of yellow flowers sitting on top of his head and what looks like a ceremonial sword in his hands, the ornate hilt and sheath glittering in the dappled sun filtering down from the trees. Geralt raises a careful eyebrow at him, then gestures for Jaskier to follow, and he does so without argument.

“I believe this is yours,” Geralt says when he approaches the circle of nobles. He holds the sword out to Madam Anais, who takes it with a smile that is far too kind for her face.

“You didn’t disappoint,” she says smoothly. “You even saved him for the end — I quite liked hearing him scream.”

Oh.  _ Oh.  _ This had been more than just an elaborate way to exert power over Geralt — this had been more than simply hiring a Witcher with the not-insubstantial possibility that he’d be cut down for his trouble. She’d wanted him to defeat someone close to her, likely a lover, to finally get the last word. No way would someone dispute a loss, the least of which over a man like Geralt. These people had just enough respect for him to submit to tradition, and being kind to the victors was the least amount of respect they could offer even if he’d been paid to win.

Still, Geralt holds out his hand, and still, the Madam produces a bag of coin and places it in his palm without complaint. Geralt dips his chin in the slightest of bows and steps away from her, slipping into the crowd with nothing but a look tossed Jaskier’s way for him to follow.

He does with the efficiency of someone doing so for a long time. Geralt doesn’t go far, stopping beneath another tree for Jaskier to catch up, and then he holds the coin out to Jaskier.

“Uh, what?” Jaskier scoffs. “No — you fought a bunch of knights for that. I think it’s yours.” 

“You told off those same armed knights,” Geralt says. “I wonder why they left me for last?”

Geralt’s expression is amused, brow quirked and lips barely,  _ barely _ twitching up into a smile. Jaskier burns with the heat of a Nilfgaardian summer and takes the bag without further complaint, only slightly mortified at the heavy weight.

“Besides,” Geralt says after a moment. “We have a tour of Toussaint to get on with, don’t we?”

“And you want me to choose where to go,” Jaskier manages through his thick tongue.

Geralt gestures to the Toussaint countryside. He’s a far sight better than Jaskier thought he would be after a fight with seven men, with only some flyaways breaking out of the tie at the back of his head. He looks far from exhausted, and if Jaskier would hazard a guess, he looks almost…  _ excited. _

Well, then. If Geralt wants to give up his earnings from a contract for a vacation, then Jaskier doesn’t have the heart to turn him down.

“All right,” Jaskier says. He pockets the coin bag with a flourish and a smile. “My dear Witcher, for your bravery and kindness, I do believe you’ve earned yourself a stay in one of Toussaint’s finest inns.”

Geralt’s expression tightens somewhat. “I don’t want to spend it all in one place —“

“Hush now!” Jaskier tugs on Geralt’s sword harness, quietly pleased when he relents and allows himself to be pulled. “Let me pamper you just a bit, darling. A dashing knight is always deserving of the nicer things!”

Geralt doesn’t argue. He follows Jaskier to their tent, where their belongings are quickly packed up and stored on Roach. Instead of making Jaskier walk, Geralt urges him up onto her back, and with the quietest, tiniest of smiles, he leads her on with her reins in his hand. Jaskier may have urged him on to enjoy the finer things in life — he urges Geralt on in the direction of the city below the Duchess’ castle to achieve such a goal — he feels as if Geralt is giving something, too. His heart flutters with it, and he desperately hopes Geralt is prudent enough to ignore it. 

——

The bath house is, admittedly, a little much.

Geralt is heavily scrutinized upon entering, but Jaskier’s pointed barbs keep the staff from disbarring him completely.

“He just won the Tourney, you know,” Jaskier says. “This isn’t how an honourable knight should

be treated.”

The woman currently taking their coin despite the scowl on her face merely blinks. He takes it as a win that she doesn’t continue glaring daggers into Geralt’s forehead and instead motions for another woman to show them to their private bath.

“Harpies, all of them,” Jaskier mutters.

“Then why come here at all,” Geralt says flatly, just as unimpressed. He follows behind Jaskier, a jangle of armor and smelling vaguely of the dusty arena he just fought in.

Jaskier tries not to think about it. He won, afterall. They’re far removed from the bitter victory Madam Anais’ contract had brought. 

He rounds the corner of the secluded room the attendant brings them to. She doesn’t say a word to either of them and leaves them to it, but she didn’t need to. The room is spacious, carved out of stone from the cave the natural spring was found in. It’s not a very big room, but the ceiling is high and rounded, with four intricate wrought iron wall sconces on each wall holding lit oil lanterns. Along each wall are ornately carved wooden benches, each with a towel sitting folded on top of it.

It’s fancy. It’s  _ expensive.  _ It’a a damn sight better than the public bathhouse, and just the smell of the spring water sets Jaskier at ease.

Jaskier gestures around the small room, looking back at Geralt with a smile. “This is why, darling.”

To say Geralt gapes is an understatement. Not outwardly, that would be unseemly for a Witcher, but his pupils widen to nearly completely round circles, and he glances around the small space like he’d just stepped through a portal to another world.

Jaskier snickers. “First time in a bathhouse, is it?” 

Geralt’s pupils thin to slits as he turns a good-natured glare on him. “Being insulted at the door is a first.”

“Don’t mind them,” Jaskier says, even as he most certainly  _ does _ mind them. “Relax, Geralt. It’s not every day we come across a hot spring.”

Which is completely true. And why Geralt doesn’t seem interested in putting up much more of an argument, if his deep sigh and drooping, relaxed shoulders is anything to go by. Jaskier holds on to the kernel of pride as Geralt begins shedding swords and armor, leaving them carefully arranged on a bench next to the door, before moving on to his jerkin and linen shirt. It takes all he has not to stare before turning and working on the buttons of his own doublet, feeling oddly stuffy suddenly, something he isn’t content on pinning on the humid room.

Geralt sinks into the water before he does, giving a deep, bone-deep sigh of relief as he does. Jaskier turns just in time to see him tip back and wet his hair, so he takes this opportunity to slip in while Geralt is distracted. The Witcher doesn’t seem to care — he’s far more interested in submerging himself in the hot water — so Jaskier drags one of their packs closer and digs around before finding his prize.

A bar of finely crafted soap, made artisanally for nobles here in Toussant. Geralt perks at the smell, no doubt stronger to him than Jaskier’s weak nose, and holds a patient palm out for it, to which Jaskier grins.

“I didn’t think you’d like it,” he says as he hands it over. 

Geralt raises one pale brow. “I just fought seven men on my own and won. I’d like to not smell like a dust pit for the rest of the day.”

Jaskier holds his hands up in surrender. “By all means, darling.”

Geralt’s glare is short-lived. He lathers his skin with the bar, the smell of it permeating the room quickly with its sharp notes of lavender and a more earthy, grounding oatmeal. Jaskier bites back a smart remark — and his nerves — and scoots across the stone bench carved into the inner dimensions of the bath to sit next to Geralt, taking the bar from him once he goes to raise it to his hair.

At the Witcher’s hesitance, he smiles more softly. “Let me,” he says. “For your victory.”

His eyes speak volumes more than he will ever say, and Jaskier likes to think he understands most of it. The Witcher is easy to read when studied enough, and while Jaskier tries to be objective with most of this man’s feelings, he can’t help but hope the look Geralt gives him is one of softness and not begrudging acceptance. His expression smoothes into something like fondness, a quirk of his mouth and brow belying his amusement. He turns his back, another easy surrender, and allows Jaskier to lather the soap into his hair.

Jaskier has only done this when Geralt is well and truly exhausted from a hunt. He is accomodating of his space, and when coin runs tight, it’s common to share beds and baths when required. And while Geralt is much more receptive to being touched than he had been before the mountain, he was still a reticent man, and to be allowed this close was still a quiet thrill.

The tie holding his hair up in a half-queue is quickly tugged out and set aside so Geralt’s hair can be properly run through with soap. Jaskier cards his fingers through it, tugging out stubborn knots as gently as he’s able, watching with barely-contained amusement as Geralt sinks more into the bubbling water. He sighs, deep like before, and obediently tips his head back when Jaskier starts scrubbing at his scalp.

The Witcher practically purrs after a while, and as much as he would like to continue, he’s quite sure Geralt will fall asleep this way if he keeps it up. So he runs his fingers through his hair again, rinsing it with just the motion, satisfied only when Geralt’s hair runs long and white and straight down his back. It’s getting long and will need a trim soon, the tips nearly reaching the bottoms of his shoulder blades, but that can wait for now.

“Feel any better?” Jaskier murmurs.

“Hm,” Geralt hums. Back to humming, then. It makes Jaskier smile.

He doesn’t hurry bathing himself. Geralt is content to soak, so he takes his own time, scrubbing himself and then his hair, getting under his fingernails and the scruff beginning to grow at his cheeks. He needs to shave, but that, too, can wait. The water feels too good to leave just yet, anyway, so he begins to massage his feet and hands, working away knots gathered from days walking beside Geralt to get here.

Or, at least, he would have. Geralt seems to wake from the dead at that same moment to notice, and in an odd show of affection, reaches the scant few inches between them to take one of Jaskier’s hands between his own and begins to rub at his fingers.

Heat flashes up his spine, pooling in his chest and coloring his face. He manages not to squawk, but only just.

“I can do that,” he stammers out after a moment. “I didn’t mean to wake you —“

“Thank you,” Geralt says quickly, cutting him off. His golden eyes are fixed on their hands as he works, his thumbs pressing just the right amount of pressure into Jaskier’s palms it nearly makes him melt. 

But the sudden admission throws him. “What for?” he asks. “For this?”

Geralt shakes his head minutely. “No. For before. At the Tourney.”

Ah. “They don’t get to mistreat you,” Jaskier says. Probably harder than necessary, but Geralt doesn’t stop rubbing the tension out of the tendons in his hands, so he keeps going. “They —  _ we _ — expect the world of you, then spit on you for your trouble. I won’t stand for it if I can help it.”

Geralt flicks a strange look up at him. “We?”

Jaskier makes a flippant gesture with his other hand. “We. Humans. I’m not so different from them, you know.”

Now Geralt’s strange look turns thunderous. It’d frighten him if he hadn’t seen it before. “Don’t speak of yourself like that. You aren’t like them.”

That Geralt thinks of him as different enough warms him beyond words. He wants to argue, but Geralt’s sharp look stops him, so he simply allows Geralt to continue on, switching hands when the Witcher deems the first completed. Jaskier watches him work for a time, marvelling at how his callouses feel against the soft, unscarred skin of his own palms. Geralt likely doesn’t notice, but Jaskier does, and he desperately hopes he can remember this feeling after today.

But after Geralt is done, he holds his own hand out, and the hint is easy enough to follow. Geralt’s palm is rougher than his own as he presses his thumbs into the center of it, thick with scarred-over blisters decades old now. His fingers are thick and long, the nails always cut short, the nail beds slightly blue with how pale his skin is. He doesn’t wince when Jaskier accidentally presses too hard into a still-healing scrape across the back of his hand — likely gained during the swordfight earlier in the day — and like before with his hair, he relaxes into it. Jaskier takes his time, savoring every moment before switching to the next hand.

This one is not as rough as his right. He casts with this hand, his fingertips worn from expelling fire from them for so long. His knuckles crack when Jaskier presses into the meat of his palm, eliciting another pleased sigh. When Jaskier is finished, Geralt flexes his fingers, a quietly pleased look crossing his features before he looks at Jaskier with a gleam in those golden eyes that speaks far more than he ever could.

“Thank you,” he says after a long moment. “For that.”

Geralt nods. He knows Jaskier isn’t speaking of the care he paid to his hands, but that still he is grateful for. He’s thankful for what Geralt thinks of him, for the worth he sees in him beyond an annoying travelling companion. He feels like they’re connecting on a level he’s only dreamed of, and as Geralt emerges from the water, pale and clean and relaxed for once in a long time, Jaskier begins to believe his dream may come true, even if only just. 


	3. for the beating soul in my hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually did quite a lot of research into medieval wound-cleaning methods and painkillers for this. witchers have an adverse reaction to poppymilk — it makes them sleepy — which is why geralt is reluctant to take it here, even though it was a common way to numb the body back then. wine, on the other hand, was a pretty widespread and useful disinfectant for shallow wounds, so here we are lol. BAMF/protective jaskier to the rescue!

“Ridiculous.”

Geralt grunts. 

“Absolutely ridiculous. If I had a coin for every time something like this happened —“

“You’d be rich, yes. If I had a coin for how many times you’ve said ridiculous today, I’d be out of a job.”

Jaskier turns an offended glare to the Witcher beside him. Geralt’s smirk is barely there, but to Jaskier’s surprise, it’s easy to spot.

“You don’t get to joke at times like this,” Jaskier says accusingly. “That’s my job!”

Geralt lifts one shoulder in a small shrug. His eyes cast about in front of them at the ridiculous ordeal they must survive through, never really budging from his pre-determined place in the procession. His amusement is a gentle twist at the corner of his mouth, barely-there but there all the same.

“Then do better,” Geralt says, tone low and rough and soft in the quiet. His voice does things to Jaskier that he can’t verbally describe unless he enjoys being maimed, so he squirms instead, his every limb acting out against him as he tries valiantly to stand still. 

Jaskier can’t help himself. Well, he can, and he most definitely will, because pining after his best friend is something he has down to a science now. He can’t afford to reveal himself when he effectively has nowhere to go for foreseeably the rest of the night.

Which, _uhg_. Another person marches up the center of the hall, dressed in the finest clothes they probably own — which isn’t all the fine, really, but who is Jaskier to judge? — hands wringing at the edges of their frayed vest and their head tilted down in reverence to the noble they kneel in front of. The noble Geralt is hired by and Jaskier is growing increasingly murderous towards as he dismisses each poor townsfolk one after another.

“But our crops,” the kneeling man stammers. “We have barely enough to feed ourselves this season —“

“Then you’d better work it out, hmm?” the noble snaps. Jaskier has already forgotten his name, but he’s fat and old and ugly, and that’s about as far as he got before tuning him out during introductions. Well, until he started insulting Geralt, and then it took all he had not to leap and smash his lute over his balding, sweaty head. “I haven’t got the patience for your rambling. Your shortcomings are not my problem. You pay the same as every year, or were the tariff conditions not clear enough?”

The man dips his chin. He’s trembling, but very clearly trying to fight it, his knuckles bone white as he grips his shirt to keep himself still. He bows improperly, and steps back. 

“M’lord,” he says. He turns away as laughter from the Lord and his knights rumbles through the hall, and Jaskier wants to scream.

“You see?” the Lord says. He smacks Geralt beside him with the back of a jewel-encrusted hand to his armored chest, though the Witcher doesn’t budge. He barely even blinks. “Cowards, the lot of them. Couldn’t raise a sword if I’d paid them to.”

“But you did pay us,” Jaskier bites out. “So if we could please —“

“I hired the Witcher,” the Lord snaps back. Jaskier only shuts up because the only thing that would escape is a scream of frustration, and not anything out of fear. He doesn’t fear a man that belittles farmers to boost his disgustingly large ego. “Not you, bard. Why he keeps you around is beyond me.”

“The bard has a name,” Geralt says. His tone is flat, like always, belying no hidden emotion to the untrained ear, but Jaskier can hear the frustration in his rough voice. “And wherever I go, he goes.”

“Then I suppose I must suffer him while we wait. I paid you, Witcher, so you’ll stay until I command you otherwise.”

The command to keep quiet goes unsaid, yet the look on the Lord’s face is enough to convey his meaning. He wants Geralt here as a show of power and nothing else — nevermind that a Witcher is not an especially expensive person to hire. They were picky, yes, and required payment upfront (usually), but any lay person could muster the coin to swing a Witcher’s attention. 

Unfortunately for Jaskier’s very thin, waning patience, this Lord had enough to spare. Five-hundred crowns for a Witcher’s presence at court and here they were, easy money for wasted time. 

He hates it. He could be in a nice tavern in Novigrad or on the road to some far-off place only Geralt knew the destination of. They’d been on a streak of success lately, swinging between easy, bearable contracts for several weeks now — he wants to move, wants to step back into an easy rhythm he knows the both of them remember too well. Not here, surrounded by guards bristling with swords and polearms, far too twitchy and attentive to the sweating man commanding this entire ordeal. Instead they were stuck here, and his stomach clenches with a feeling akin to accidentally missing a step on the stairs. 

Geralt, thankfully, seems to share his sentiments. If a Witcher could look bored, Geralt would be the picture perfect model of it, and it takes far more wherewithal to prevent himself from laughing at him than it normally would had they been alone.

Another trembling man comes up to the dais, nervous and terrified, bowing and blustering. He can’t afford the dowry for his son to marry up into nobility — a sad ordeal, and in any other place, maybe a compromise would be made.

Clearly he has too much faith in humanity still. The Lord laughs, and with a flick of his wrist, gestures for Geralt to step forward.

“Witcher!” he says, voice booming through the hall. Jaskier’s blood runs cold at the sound. He knows that tone of voice, has heard it countless times from countless men. It’s the voice of a man who gets what he wants when he wants it, knowing that commanding a Witcher came with little price he himself had to pay. 

Geralt, to his immense credit, doesn’t move. He’s standing a pace away from the Lord’s ornately carved wooden throne and yet he could be but a statue, immaculately molded from the face of the moon.

The Lord’s patience snaps thin. “Witcher!” he booms again. Every man in the hall flinches with the annoyance strung high in that ugly voice. He throws his open palm out to the shaking, terrified man before him, commanding his subject both to kneel and the Witcher in question to move. “Show this man what is done to those that can’t pay their dowry.”

Finally, the statue moves, and with bated breath Jaskier watches as Geralt turns an arched brow to the Lord beside him. If looks could maim, this one would have the Lord in carefully pared pieces.

“Failure to pay a dowry doesn’t forfeit someone’s life,” Geralt says shortly.

The Lord smiles suddenly, like he’s lured the Witcher into a game. A chill settles in Jaskier’s stomach like a great yawning pit. 

“Not his life,” he says. “Just a finger or two — he wants to marry up, after all, make a better fortune for his family. Failing to provide a bride price is questionable, is it not, when he still asks for the marriage to continue?”

“I just need a little more time —“ the man stammers.

“Leave,” Geralt snaps, yet he doesn’t raise his voice. He rarely does, now after the mountain, after everything. Jaskier eases at his side a bit. The rest of the hall, however, tastes of sour tension, every breath of the room hanging on what the Witcher will do next.

The man scrambles away. The Lord and Geralt stare at each other, but Geralt is used to such things. The Lord is the first to look away, cowed by a lowly mutant, and the odd looks tossed his way by his guards would warm Jaskier for months to come if he wasn’t itching to run out of here. Instead he stays put as the next person is waved in, Geralt settling back into place beside him, sighing through his nose like being here personally insulted him.

“Ordering you like a dog,” Jaskier mumbles. His anger is so potent it boils right underneath his skin, Geralt’s presence beside him the only reason he doesn’t snap back. The unspoken _shut up now or else I wring your neck_ radiates off Geralt well enough, and he doesn’t necessarily have that much of a death wish to keep running his mouth.

And it’s not like the coin is bad. All Geralt has to do is stand around and look scary — which, on any given day, is less energy-consuming than trying to not look scary. This Lord wants to flaunt that he can afford a Witcher, and if all it costs Geralt is a bit of pride, Jaskier supposes he can suffer through it as well.

The previous altercation is forgotten — or ignored — as the day wears on. The Lord makes idle chatter that to any one of his noble houses would find interesting only because their lives depended on pleasing him, but to Jaskier, rattles on like the cheap chatter of someone desperately trying to preen. He realizes this man is trying to _please_ Geralt, in an odd, twisted way, like pleasing a man like Geralt could be done by brute force alone. He wonders now if their contract was all but a farce to lure Geralt here, using a not-insubstantial sum to get his foot in the door and work that, on the surface, required no more energy from him than anything else would. 

It itches at him like a gnat, yet instead of swatting at it he’s forced to endure it. The Lord is not obvious about it, regaling the Witcher with tales of hunts and beasts and women as all men like him do, boasting as if feats of bloodshed mattered much to someone who lived it every day. 

It angers Jaskier more than the mocking had, more than the disregard for his existence and those of this man’s subjects — this was Geralt being treated like a toy to be gnawed on if only this Lord could get his grubby hands on him. Combating the nasty looks and slurs people commonly threw at Geralt was second place now, as much a part of Jaskier’s day as waking up and getting dressed was. But fighting this? Money, power, however small, and a man unafraid to look a Witcher in the eye and order him to kneel while demanding an untoward favour in the same breath?

Jaskier’s patience lasts just long enough for the hall to grow quiet. Geralt is as impassive as ever, yet he can see the attention the Witcher pays to the room, amber eyes roaming and examining things Jaskier wishes he could see. People filter out, coming in to express their pitying grievances less and less. The Lord waves his hand and the guards turn on their heels and leave, a great clanking of armor and chainmail following them out until Geralt, Jaskier, and this Lord are very, very alone.

The Lord turns a smile on Geralt and while Jaskier is very confident the Witcher could end this quickly should it turn bad, his skin grows clammy and his heart leaps up his throat anyway at the glimmer of something nasty in the Lord’s eye.

“Care to join me for a drink?” he asks. Patiently, if a man like him ever could be, and Jaskier knows it’s a farce.

Geralt displays no outward indication that he’s uncomfortable. Jaskier knows better. “You’ve hired me for your court — court is over. If it’s all the same, I’ll be taking my coin and my leave.”

“My treat,” the Lord says, and this is also not a question. A demand, an askance with conditions should Geralt toe the line. He has already by refusing to draw his blade, and already this man’s patience is spider-silk thin.

Geralt is not cowed. He’s as stubborn as ever, and stares back as if he weren’t staring into twin black holes, devoid of all emotion and fear of consequence. 

“My coin,” he says simply. He reaches back, just enough to grab at Jaskier’s sleeve, tugging him close. “And my leave.”

It happens so fast Jaskier barely has time to register what happens. The Lord’s hand snaps out, flashing with jewels and gold, snatching the collar of Geralt’s jerkin and yanking him forward. 

“I don’t think I was asking,” the Lord growls. 

“And I don’t think you want to test me,” Geralt growls back.

Movement in the corner of his eye catches Jaskier’s attention. Geralt’s hand is halfway to forming _aard_ at his side, his wrist curled inward and his fingers stretched out. Even without drawing a blade, a Witcher is dangerous, and Jaskier is the closest he’s ever been to witnessing the violence Geralt is capable of mustering at any given moment. 

He finds he isn’t afraid, even this close. He rests a hand on Geralt’s back between his shoulders underneath his armor, either in reassurance or in simple acknowledgement of his presence, and Geralt leans back into it just the slightest in response. Without either of them speaking, they understand each other, and even with Geralt readying for a fight, the lines of his body tensing in anticipation, Jaskier feels safer than if he’d been far, far away.

The Lord pulls Geralt further down — or attempts to, as the Witcher is unmoved. “Come, now,” the Lord demands instead, clearly floundering now that he’s discovered that a physical altercation will get him nowhere. “Let me treat you, Witcher.”

“My coin,” Geralt growls. His hand comes up and he forces the Lord’s fist away from him, yanking his fat fingers off his jerkin. 

The Lord finally stands. “I can call my guards back in here if I felt so inclined,” he threatens. He raises a hand, his fingers poised to snap. “Don’t make me feel such.”

The demand is unspoken, but never has it been clearer than now. His other hand is pointing down, a command to kneel, and Jaskier knows what that means. People have desired Geralt just as much as they feared him, an unfortunate double standard he has had to walk his whole life, and will continue to until he dies by blade or beast. He sometimes reciprocated that desire, but never like this — never because the threat of violence made him reciprocate.

It makes Jaskier sick. To see it in action, to see what humankind was capable of doing even without doing much at all — to see that all it took was a nasty enough soul to produce such selfish, unbridled cruelty — and to use it against a man who could do nothing more than bow to it because he was perceived as nothing more than an emotionless cur —

It sickens him. It angers him. His body vibrates with it, shaking him like he was cold. This was supposed to be a simple job, an easy job. Stand around and look scary and then they would be on their way. And yet —

And yet —

The Lord’s hand snaps out again. It grabs Geralt’s jaw, forcing him down, and what Jaskier’s body does next is beyond his comprehension. 

One moment he is within himself, present with Geralt through this moment of uncertainty, and the next his hand is sliding down Geralt’s back to the dagger kept sheathed in his belt. The Witcher can hardly react before Jaskier is tugging it out and darting forward, embedding the dagger in the Lord’s flabby neck with a quick flash of silver. The Lord’s grip on Geralt loosens as quickly as it had tightened, and he falls back with a gurgle as he begins to spasm, his hands coming up to paw at the spurting wound right underneath his jaw.

Jaskier can hardly breathe. All at once the air is knocked out of him, this man’s cruel, disgusting existence snuffed out with a single practiced movement. His hand is slick with blood and the knife drops out of it with a clatter on the stone floor, but he hardly hears it over the race of his pulse in his ears. It awes him. It scares him.

He manages to take in a sharky breath as he stares down at the twitching form of the Lord. “Geralt —“

Geralt grabs him and spins him round to face the hall’s double doors. He hardly needs to lean close for Jaskier to feel his breath over the shell of his ear, the rumble of his voice through the barrel of his chest. 

“Run.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice. He’s quick and nimble, even when drenched in cold fear, the soles of his boots slamming on carpeted stone the only sound accompanying the pounding in his ears for a long time. He doesn’t remember the way out of here but the steady weight of Geralt following right behind him steers him down empty halls and corridors, right up until they reach a service door and Jaskier slams it open with his shoulder.

His heart beats a heavy, loud beat in his ears all the way to the stables just inside the gate leading out to the rest of town. Geralt shoves him into a corner of Roach’s stall so he’s relatively out of sight — at the end of the day, the castle is empty, its serviceman and chambermaids busy with preparing dinner and rooms for the Lord currently bleeding out on his great hall floor — but Jaskier takes the quiet moment given to him to breathe. He shudders with each inhale, which is novel on it’s own because that only happens when he’s terrified, which he’s not, thank you very much, even as Geralt keeps throwing him worried glances as he tacks Roach.

“I’m fine,” Jaskier manages. He tries to wave Geralt off but his hands shake, and the Witcher clearly doesn’t buy it.

He takes one of Jaskier’s hands and wordlessly tugs him close. Jaskier’s heart does a flip for decidedly not-terrified reasons as Geralt lifts him with steady hands around his waist into Roach’s saddle as if he wasn’t a grown man, then climbs up behind him, scooting Jaskier forward so they slot together.

“Hold on,” Geralt says, but it’s quiet and gentle, as if he were speaking to Roach. Jaskier realizes his whole body is trembling, so he grabs a fistfull of Roach’s mane and does as he’s told.

The shouting doesn’t start until they’re more than halfway through town, and even then it’s far away. A bell sounds in the encroaching dark of the evening, and all around them people that’d been milling the streets after their long day of work turn their attention towards the squat castle on the hill where their Lord resides. Jaskier presses himself back into Geralt’s chest as far as he can go, taking comfort in his solid weight as much as the gentle roll of Roach underneath them — if Geralt hasn’t spurned her into a run just yet, they’re safe for now.

“Please tell me that dagger didn’t have “ _Geralt of Rivia, a quite scary looking Witcher with white hair and a dashing companion, owns this beautifully crafted silver dagger and you should hurry to fetch him_ ” engraved on it somewhere,” Jaskier finally manages. His voice is thick with false humor, but Geralt’s answering chuckle behind him eases him a bit.

“No,” Geralt says. “Just the scary Witcher part.”

“Now is _not_ the time to joke.”

“They haven’t left the castle yet,” Geralt assures. He twists in the saddle, looking behind them, but Jaskier thinks if he does the same he may throw up. He really doesn’t want to be hunted down by a war party today, thank you very much. “But they knew we were the last to see him. The guards, at least, will follow us.”

As if on cue, shouting starts closer behind them, up a ways but close enough to spurn Geralt into action. He flicks the reins and Roach starts a canter, the sharp click of her shoes on the stone road a loud accompaniment to Jaskier’s thumping heart. By the time they reach the gate out of town, Roach is barely holding back from sprinting, only measuring herself because she may slip on the slick road from the day’s rain, Geralt’s grip on her firm. Once they’re past the threshold and the road turns into packed dirt, he lets her fly, and she runs like she doesn’t have two grown men and their belongings on her back.

For a while, nothing follows them. Roach can only run with so much weight for a few minutes, and when she slows, Geralt turns her towards a game path hidden between some trees. Jaskier can finally breathe once they disappear between them, confident at least that they can find some place to hide out the night. They’ll have to be careful, and possibly have to camp out in a cave, but it’ll be a few hours before a hunting party is sent out. It’s late, the sun is setting, and even with Geralt’s Witcher eyes they wouldn’t dare travel too far into the night —

— with a shout, Jaskier is pushed out of the saddle and into a thorny bush, his foot nearly catching in the stirrup and yanking him forward as Roach continues on. A whistle and a grunt follows, a sound he is intimately familiar with— an arrow hitting a body, finding its target through the thicket of trees. And that grunt, one from his companion, one he has heard hundreds of times before if he’s heard it once. It twists something inside him and the insistence of that pain drives him to fight the catch and pull of the branches at his clothes, fighting to escape even as they bite his skin, but then the forest is loud with shouting and the clang of swords, a suddenness so profound it leaves him reeling. 

He doesn’t know what to do. Instinct tells him to run, but years spent on the road tells him to hide and assess. He scrambles out of the bush as best he can, his hands and face and arms getting scratched and punctured as he does, yet he barely feels it — he’s far too focused on the flash of silver weaving between the armored bodies emerging out of the trees behind them. Geralt, his sword catching the dying sunlight, its familiar shape and sound a balm only just. His finesse is something often observed, from far away during a difficult hunt, hidden by trees and brush and the silent, oppressive insistence on Geralt’s prowess in battle; to moments of quiet practice, steel and silver weaving through smoky air as the Witcher practices footwork at the end of each day by the fire. Jaskier would bask in such a dancer’s performance if given the opportunity, but the rustle of bodies and armor piling onto the Witcher whites out anything else.

They’d been followed, he realizes, followed the whole way here — he wants to follow Geralt but he’s quite certain doing so would mean certain death, so he chases after Roach instead, barely able to catch her reins before she dashes off in fright.

“Let’s go,” he tells her. Steel clangs behind them, and over the din of fighting he can hear someone yell _over_ _there_! His heart chokes him again and he tries to scramble into Roach’s saddle but footsteps run up on him too quickly and he’s grabbed by the back of his doublet and yanked back.

“No!” He squirms, twisting, trying to loosen the strong hand holding on to him. He reaches back and tries to claw at his attacker’s face but another arm wraps round him, pinning him against a hard steel breastplate. His heart jumps into his throat again, nearly choking him, the world narrowing down as his body says run run run, the scope of it just the tilting trees above him and the stars staring down at him from between their canopies, teasing and laughing. He can barely breathe except for the words leaping up past his throbbing heart. “Let me go or I’ll —“

“Your Witcher isn’t around to save you,” a voice snarls in his ear. His stomach drops— the forest around them is growing quieter, bodies hitting the ground and the ever-present sounds of swords clanging against each other growing muffled as they find bodies to sink into. He tries desperately not to imagine them running Geralt through, and he struggles again, kicking off the ground with renewed strength, wrong-footing the man holding him as he snarls and curses.

“Stop fucking moving or I’ll —“

“Geralt!” Jaskier shouts. The man holding him grabs a fistful of his hair with his other hand, yanking back, the pain springing tears to Jaskier’s eyes almost instantly. But he can’t, he won’t, give up. “Geralt! Please, I —“

“Shut up!” his captor snarls. He pulls on his hair tighter, bending him back, his spine arching and his feet lifting off the ground. Jaskier whimpers and reaches back, fumbling at the man’s wrist holding him strung up. “You fucking whore — 

He stops squirming. He remembers in an instant the dagger Geralt instructed he keep in a sheath, either tied to his belt or hidden in his boot, for the express purpose of defending himself should Geralt not be around. It’d been a practical gift, one given through short, stammered sentences and an earnestness not seen on the Witcher very often. Accepting it had been like accepting a vow, and from that moment on Jaskier has treasured that plain, simple dagger like he does his lute, cleaning it and sharpening it until it’s as swift and cutting as his most handsome of ballads.

For the second time that day, his body reacts on instinct. He reaches down to his belt and snatches the finely carved bone handle and yanks it free from its sheath, bringing it up and around in a practiced move taught to him through gentle hands and time-worn patience.

The blade finds its home in an instant. The man behind him screams, letting Jaskier go, dropping him on his feet. Jaskier scrambles away the moment his boots touch the floor of the forest, his fist holding the dagger warm with a spray of blood mingling with that of the Lord. A second man that had been watching his friend struggle with the bard nearby raises his sword, then jerks it up and swings it sideways — Jaskier dodges the swipe by dropping to his knees, then springs up again in a move ingrained into his memory from years spent watching it done, raising his arm with the dagger and sliding it cleanly between armor plate right into the man’s armpit.

He yells, too, in fury and pain, his sword dropping as he brings his body around again. He tries to grab Jaskier with his other hand, but with adrenaline flowing hot in his veins, Jaskier jumps back. The knight is slow and heavy, wounded and pissed, and he lunges again — Jaskier ducks and twists, sending him away like a bull after a flag, then brings the dagger down into the unprotected nape of his neck with the slick slide of flesh and scrape of bone.

The knight drops dead to the ground. His friend lay squirming in the bracken, slowly dying from blood loss, choking and gurgling. Jaskier stands, shaking and panting, trying very hard to fight off the sudden nausea rolling up his stomach even as his mouth waters with it. Blood soaks his hands, his clothes, and he knows in an abstract way he should probably be quite worried about possible wounds he may not feel because adrenaline keeps him numb. 

But he doesn’t worry. He can’t. The forest is quiet, like the hush before a storm, bated and waiting. The sun slips lower and everything is cast in slanted shadow, purples and blues nearing into black as everything is limned in gold. Beautiful, if it weren’t for the bodies littering the ground. 

He turns away from the dead and dying men to the sudden silence of the forest behind him, finding more dead, their silver armor gleaming in the setting sun like shiny beetle shells, carcasses littered mid-lunge, mid-fight, a menagerie of death Jaskier barely registers. He can’t — he can’t look at them. Can’t acknowledge that they were anything but hounds sent out after the foxes — but this time the foxes turned around and bit back.

He can’t dwell, even as his hands begin to shake and the sudden, immediate high of a fight burning hot through his veins subsides. His blood runs cold, tempering him like steel in oil, because at the side of the thin trail, hidden by a few trees, is a familiar black form. Jaskier picks his way through the dying war party to that kneeling form, his knees weak and shaky, his entire body trembling even though it’s over. 

“Geralt,” he somehow manages. His voice, surprisingly, doesn’t break, but his heart is, because Geralt is soaked in blood. “Geralt, are you alright?”

The Witcher grunts. Jaskier drops to his knees in front of him, reaching out and running careful hands over his chest and shoulders — his armor survived the brunt of the attack, but there are slits in some places where a sword landed a lucky hit, and Geralt is bent over himself like moving hurts too much. He’s too much in shadow to observe properly, but Jaskier’s nimble fingers have memorized the feel of open wounds, bleeding sluggish and thick with already clotting blood. He runs his hands over Geralt’s shoulders, brushes his calloused thumbs under fluttering eyes and down bellowing sides, fingertips catching on rends and holes drawn by misses not taken. 

Geralt is torn up, sliced up, exhausted so thoroughly in a fight that lasted mere moments, if at all. His sides heave, his breath whistles, and as the sun finally disappears Jaskier catches the first glimpse of something black reaching up under Geralt’s collar. Like his veins were turning black, and yet his potion bag is on Roach, far away and useless. If Jaskier didn’t know any better, he’d think the Witcher had come prepared to fight alghouls instead of the easy, menial work that came with pleasing a Lord’s ego — and the unspoken demand that Geralt would have to give more than his pride if he wished to escape.

Jaskier tries to lift his head but he won’t budge, so he settles with gathering long, blood-damp silver strands and twists them out of his face.

“We can’t stay,” Jaskier says. “We have to go — please stand for me, darling?”

Geralt grunts again. He moves his arms out and Jaskier can see slashes in his sleeves, too, the fabric hanging heavy and dark with blood. He grips his knees before heaving himself up, clearly taking all of his energy to simply stand. Jaskier fumbles to slip his arm underneath Geralt’s, managing to slot his shoulder into the Witcher’s armpit at the same moment he slumps back. All two-hundred-something pounds of him sinks into Jaskier at once and he wheezes, stumbling on his feet.

“Please tell me you can get on Roach on your own,” he bites out. 

Geralt doesn’t make a sound. He steps in time with Jaskier, footfalls heavy in the grass, as they amble towards a twitching and agitated Roach up the trail. Her snorting and stamping does nothing to hide the distant rumble of hooves on packed earth through the trees, still a ways away but near enough to send Jaskier into a fit of nerves.

“Come on, darling,” he manages as he finally, finally drags Geralt to Roach. He lays the Witcher against her side and, just like he always does with Jaskier, lifts with his hands around Geralt’s waist. At the same time, Geralt heaves himself up, groaning and hissing as he goes, and it’s then that Jaskier sees an arrow sticking out of his back, its broken shaft dangling black and wet with blood, run straight through the leather of his pauldron between two shiny studs.

“Fuck,” he mutters. Geralt settles into the saddle and Jaskier climbs in after him, reaching around his sagging bulk for the reins, careful not to jostle him too much. Geralt sighs deep through his nose, and he knows he failed in not hurting him. “Fuck, Geralt, what do I do?”

“Away,” Geralt finally, finally manages. His voice is tight with barely-restrained emotion, strung taunt with pain and something else. “Jaskier — move.”

He spurs Roach, and in a nervous twist, she’s off. She’s nimble enough on her agitated feet to get them around the tight bends in the game trail, heeding Jaskier’s tug at the reins only when she needs pacing. He wants her to last longer, to get them far, far away from here before men come looking for them — he can’t have her running out of control. He tells himself this, over and over, a mantra accompanying the thundering of his heartbeat against his sternum as he tries to keep Geralt steady in front of him. 

The smell of blood is thick in his nose and even through the Witcher’s many thick layers he can feel the other man is cold. The sight of black veins panicked him — Geralt hadn’t the time to down a potion in the fray — so his mind races with what it may be. Poison? Some concoction rubbed on the guard’s blades before combat? Magic, maybe, cast from a distance, a mage hidden in the trees that they only so narrowly escaped?

It dogs him for miles. Roach slows to a canter, chest heaving, bellowing like a beast, picking her way through the widening trail in the dark. It eventually collides with a wide dirt road, devoid of any traffic, lined on either side with a low stone wall separating it from the forest on one side and fields of wheat on the other. His eyesight is far from useful in the dark, but he’s adjusted some, and turns Roach left down the road, following the steadily growing fields towards what he hopes is civilization.

Geralt is eerily silent the whole time. Cold and quiet — a most dangerous combination where a Witcher was concerned. But he’s upright, and breathing, and when Jaskier releases one hand from the reins to run it up his damaged side, careful not to press too hard or brush over too many damp holes in his armor, a clammy hand meets Jaskier’s, sticky with blood but a sure sign Geralt is conscious.

“Just a little longer,” Jaskier murmurs. He doesn’t really know how long — it could be hours until they reach a town. But it’s all he has, for now, and the night is quiet, devoid of hoofbeats and clanging armor. “Hold on a little longer.”

Geralt hums. He leans back, settling his weight some, going pliant for the first time since he got in the saddle, still entirely too careful of the arrow jutting from his shoulder. Jaskier takes his weight, resigning himself to tossing this doublet when things are said and done. There’s only so much blood fine silk can take before it’s ruined.

The first signs of life appear near dawn. The sky is turning a dark teal near the horizon, still black when Jaskier looks directly up, dotted with stars in familiar patterns, and yet some farmers are up early fitting their horses and carts. None of them give Geralt and Jaskier a second glance as they pass through the wide bend in the road, trotting by homestead after homestead, field after field, following lamplight until the dirt road turns into stone. A wide square opens up, lined by a tavern, an inn, a blacksmith, and a grocer, with smaller buildings behind them — no castle or manor poking up into the night. 

Just a town. Some nameless place he might recognize if he weren’t still shaking from nerves and the cold, wheeling Roach around to the inn’s stable and sliding off before she’s come fully to a stop.

He keeps Geralt in place with a hand on his thigh — noting the leather is ripped and damp here, too — as he leads Roach into an empty stall. The stablehand likely isn’t awake yet at this hour, and the only other horse inside is a black mare sleeping in the next stall over. He pulls the stall door closed behind him and latches it, then finally turns and holds his hands out for Geralt to take, bracing his feet into the fresh hay cushioning the floor.

“Slowly,” Jaskier says quietly. Geralt complies, moving in jerky, tight movements, his face twisted in a scowl in his attempt to mask the pain. It fails every time but Jaskier doesn’t rib him for it, not now. Geralt takes his offered hands and swings his leg over the saddle, slipping down from it and landing on his feet with a heavy thump, nearly toppling over. 

Jaskier slips under his arm again and manages not to kill them both dragging him out of the stable and into the inn. It says a lot about this town that it even has one, speaking of wealth and travel that many places don’t see as often. It’s quiet inside, the main hall empty, candles burning low on the far greeting counter and the smattering of long tables leading up to the stairs. The innkeeper is nowhere to be found — in fact, the whole bottom floor is empty — so Jaskier digs behind the counter for a room key, set safely on an iron peg hammered into the wall, before he helps Geralt carefully up the stairs.

His side and arm are well and truly soaked in tacky blood by the time he finds the room the key belongs to and deposits Geralt — who is quite heavy, by the way, and only grew heavier as he grew weaker and weaker, worrying Jaskier more every passing second — on the wide bed in the small room. The Witcher doesn’t even bother moving after that, the shaft of the arrow sticking out of his back like a cruel anchor weighing him down.

“I’ll be right back,” Jaskier says. His voice shakes, yet he ignores it. “Stay here and don’t — don’t move.”

Geralt grunts. Jaskier takes it as an affirmation and trots down the stairs as quietly as he can, returning to Roach without somehow tripping in the dark. 

“I’m sorry, girl,” he murmurs to her as he approaches. She flicks an ear at him and sighs; she’s just as tired as he is. He smoothes a hand down her neck, then begins untacking her, beginning with her bridle and working down her body in quick, practiced movements. 

Geralt’s potion bag is the first he hefts over his shoulder, taking stock of its heavy weight and the clink of glass against straw. Their packs are next, and then the saddlebags holding their toolkits and valuables. All of this he swings over his shoulders and carries it back up to their room as quickly and quietly as he can, whispering an apology to Roach as he leaves her dusty and tired in her wide stall. He takes some solace in knowing she will sleep through the night despite the lack of Geralt’s pampering for now, but only just, as he has a long night himself ahead of him.

Geralt hasn’t moved from his place collapsed on the bed. Yet he breathes, slow and even, a small comfort given the wheeze audible even across the room. Jaskier locks the door behind him and dumps their things at the foot of the bed, fumbling only a little with flint and his dagger to get a fire going. The tinder in the hearth catches, and in several quick moments, the dark room is thrown into dancing shadows and warmth. 

Jaskier drops the flint and dagger into his pack and brushes his hands up the back of Geralt’s armor. His fingertips barely graze the arrow’s shaft but Geralt doesn’t move, his breathing hitched yet slow, as if he was pacing himself.

“Geralt,” Jaskier says quietly. He wedges his hands under Geralt’s side, skin slipping on blood-slick leather. “Geralt, I need you to sit up.”

His voice must hold firm despite his racing heart and twisting gut because Geralt, in a movement that obviously pains him greatly with how slowly he accomplishes it, lifts his left side enough to get his own hand under himself. Jaskier grips his bicep and helps him up the rest of the way, steadying the Witcher as he sways, waiting for him to sit still on the edge of the bed before even thinking of letting go. Geralt’s eyes are squeezed shut and his face is tilted down, but even in the flickering light cast by the fire Jaskier can see the dark, stringy veins crawling up his neck and jaw, his skin paler than ever and sweat dampening his brow.

Anger bites up his throat again, as well as heartbreak and gripping, painful sorrow. “Can you look at me?” he asks, as softly as he can. He cups Geralt’s jaw and tries to get him to relax enough to tilt up his face, hiding his surprise with a crooked smile when he does. “There you are, darling.”

Amber stares back at him. Pupils blown wide, nearly round in the dark, only a hint of twin points at their apex curves. Geralt blinks against the firelight but keeps his eyes open, trying to appease as Jaskier tilts his face this way and that, checking his face for wounds while also noting how dark his veins are.

“Is it the arrow?” he asks. “That did this?’

Geralt nods, a short movement that doesn’t jostle much. His lips twist into a snarl as Jaskier shifts his hands down to the ties on his armor.

“Don’t give me that,” Jaskier says. “I’m not letting you sit here and grow septic.”

“Won’t go septic.”

Geralt sounds like it hurts to speak. His voice strains against his throat, raspy in all the wrong ways, breathy like he can barely breathe in deep enough before something stops him. Jaskier bites his lip and forges on despite the hot glare melting a hole in the side of his head and the shaky, weak grip Geralt wraps around his shoulder.

“Get _off_ , Jaskier,” Geralt bites out.

Jaskier tugs at another tie, and with an involuntary sigh, Geralt’s right pauldron slips off. He raises a brow at Geralt, challenging him, and in the world’s shortest, quietest argument, Geralt relents.

He shifts back, widening his knees for Jaskier to step between. Jaskier takes the unspoken invitation and works quickly, gathering Geralt’s hair to one side and carefully, with as gentle a grip as he can, wraps his fist around the broken shaft of the arrow.

Geralt grunts, strained. His hands come up and wrap around Jaskier’s waist like he means to toss him across the room. “Jaskier —“

“It has to come out,” Jaskier says. “And then I can address your other wounds.”

He doesn’t give Geralt a chance to fight him. The Witcher’s grip tightens on him and Jaskier clenches his own at the same time, and with a rip of flesh and leather and a pained, drawn growl from Geralt, the arrow is out.

Without looking at it, at its nasty, twisted head and jagged bite, Jaskier tosses it into the fire. It hisses with Geralt’s blood but all he hears is the panting breaths rushing out of the Witcher in front of him. He rushes to rid him of the rest of his armor, dumping it all in a pile at their feet, and then he settles on peeling the leather jerkin off of Geralt with as much speed and care as he’s capable of.

The linen shirt isn’t as fortunate, lying in tattered rags as it is, but his patience is wearing thin. Blood dribbles down Geralt’s back in a long black line from the sizeable hole the arrow had left, as well as several deep lacerations at his sides and along his arms — he looks as if he tumbled with a coven of vampires rather than a retinue of guards. But unlike any other sword wound, his veins run black, radiating out from each wound like a sick bile running underneath his clammy skin.

“White honey,” Jaskier murmurs. He sets to work, stepping away just enough so he can drag their packs to their feet. “White honey and wine — your blood is black, Geralt, surely you must feel that —“

“Feel plenty,” Geralt manages. “Fucking hurts.”

“Alright,” Jaskier soothes. He digs out White Honey and hefts up the jar, uncorking it with a thunk before pressing it into Geralt’s shaking hand. “All of it, now, very good. Now this one — don’t give me that face. It’ll help with the pain.”

“Don’t want to drink more potions than necessary —“

“We have enough Honey,” Jaskier insists. “Now drink.”

It’s a sure sign of how much pain he’s in that Geralt complies. The White Honey goes down smoothly, the sickly sweet smell of it permeating the room almost covering up the thick metallic scent of blood. The second, a thin poppymilk with mandrake and hemlock mixed in, doesn’t go down as easily.

Jaskier takes the bottles as Geralt empties them. The Witcher sways where he is, blinking as the anesthetics hit him, and Jaskier reaches out to steady him with warm hands on his shoulders.

“Ready for the hard part?”

Geralt’s mouth twists into a snarl. But he doesn’t fight when Jaskier herds him further onto the bed, then onto his back after a blanket has been laid out beneath him to catch as much blood as possible.

Jaskier fetches two bowls of water from the pump in the kitchen downstairs and several rags from a stack in the washroom next to it, promising himself to leave as much of a tip as possible before they leave later. He returns to Geralt and sets his supplies alongside the Witcher’s side, then lays out a waterskin of wine, their wallet of needles and catgut thread, and a strip of leather he’s never had to use when doing this.

He crawls up into Geralt’s lap as he lays prone, being careful of jostling him. Geralt’s fingers ghost up his thighs, and when Jaskier settles back, careful to sit on Geralt’s hips and not on any wounds, piercing amber eyes watch him from the shadow he casts across him. 

“Just for now,” Jaskier says. He takes up the leather wallet and the waterskin, popping the cork. The smell of sweet wine twists with the smell of honey and blood. “For me, darling.”

Geralt relents. He lays back with a resigned sigh, and in the warm firelight, the glint of his eyes close.

Jaskier works quickly. This is something they’re both familiar with, an argument they have every time this rarity happens. Geralt refuses treatment, insisting he’s fine, he’s done this before, he’s survived many years of bad wounds without the aid of Jaskier’s careful doctoring. But he always gives in, always relaxes, always allows Jaskier that one step too close. He could kill Geralt this close if he really tried, and yet the Witcher trusts him.

The blood washes out black at first, still being cleansed by the White Honey even minutes after having consumed it. Jaskier cleans each wound thoroughly but with haste, determining that many really don’t need stitches. Some have already begun knitting themselves closed despite the poison working itself through Geralt’s system, so he wipes them clean with water instead of wine, revealing Geralt’s pale skin and twitching muscles underneath.

Some, however, are not closing so swiftly. Those he stitches closed with practiced movements, tugging the curved needle through the clean edges of each wound after rinsing it with wine. These Geralt winces at the most, his fingers curling into Jaskier’s trousers in pain he tries not to express. But his face is pinched, and when Jaskier glances up, he can tell Geralt is biting his tongue. 

“Alright,” he says after a while. His hands no longer shake — he’s becoming far too used to this. “Turn over.”

He moves off of Geralt to allow him to move. The Witcher does, albeit slowly, careful not to tug on the thread literally holding him closed. Jaskier replaces the blanket he was lying on with a fresh one before letting him lay on his stomach even though Geralt is immune to infection — his eyes never truly leave the black, pulsing veins under his skin even as he looks all over him, inspecting him, cataloguing the damage the Lord’s men had inflicted on him.

Geralt finally settles, his head resting on his folded arms, and finally Jaskier comes face to face with the arrow wound. The black veins are the worst here, radiating from the ragged puncture wound in a wide circle that dissipates into spindly lines all over Geralt’s body. He bites his lip and settles on Geralt’s lower back so he can lean over him, watching as the hole still dribbles thick, black blood. 

“Gods,” he breathes. “Geralt —”

“I know,” Geralt murmurs. He still breathes hard, still sounds like death, but one golden eye peeks over his shoulder to pin a soft look on Jaskier. It’s so drastically different from how he’d been acting it robs Jaskier of words. “I trust you.”

Jaskier can’t breathe. He manages to nod, raising his shaky hands to pick up the wineskin. Geralt trusts him. He’s gotten this far, of course he does, but to see him so vulnerable —

He cleans the arrow wound slowly. RInsing it out takes a long while, Geralt’s blood running black for far longer than any of the other wounds. The blankets begin to smell sweet with the wine, and when he runs out, he switches to water, which only soaks the bedding more. But even with Geralt’s hyperactive metabolism, he doesn’t stop until finally, after many minutes, red begins to streak across pale skin and the body underneath him starts to relax.

“Almost,” Jaskier murmurs. He takes up the needle and thread and pierces one ragged edge of the hole with it, dragging it through as gently as he can. “Just a little longer, darling.”

Geralt sighs through his nose. He doesn’t answer, but he’s breathing better. Black veins no longer crawl up his back and across his face, and despite the needle piercing his skin, he seems to relax as the moments tick by. 

Sewing it closed takes less than a minute. Jaskier snips away excess thread and ties a knot at the end so it won’t slip out during the night — he’s quite certain these wounds will be closed in the morning, nothing more than shiny red welts when the sun rises — then wipes over it with the cleanest rag he has. When he moves off of Geralt, the Witcher sits up, slowly and carefully as if cataloging the damage, as if doing so hurts more than being tended to had. 

“Don’t pull them,” Jaskier says. Geralt glances at him, but his eyes hold no heat. He perches on the edge of the bed, his body turned towards Jaskier, holding his arms away from his body obediently. 

“I think,” he says after a long moment, “that you were right.”

Jaskier blinks, an unintentional laugh bubbling up his throat. “About?”

Geralt waves a hand at himself, one pale brow raised, as if to say everything?

“Are you admitting I was right?”

“Ridiculous,” Geralt says, smiling. But just as quickly as it was there, he sobers, and Jaskier is left transfixed as Geralt pins him with a look heavy with earnestness. “Thank you. For what you did.”

Jaskier swallows the growing lump in his throat. He manages to nod. “I would do it again, you know.”

Geralt nods. “I do know. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, darling,” Jaskier says. He leans over, tugging away the soaked blankets, bundling them up in his arms. “Now let me continue to care for you, at least for a while, hm? Be a good Witcher for me.”

Geralt seems reluctant to argue, even as he grimaces to accommodate Jaskier taking away the bedding. He stands, swaying on his feet, as Jaskier bustles around him. He dumps the blankets next to the door and finds a spare set in the chest at the foot of the bed, changing them quickly, holding his hands out for Geralt to take to help the Witcher down onto his back again. His wounds weep, but only just, and he manages to get the Witcher under the sheets without causing any more damage.

It’s only when Geralt is clean and safe and well on his way to falling asleep when Jaskier finally looks down at himself. His clothes — a fine set of peacock green silk, embroidered in feathers and flowers of shimmering red thread — are soaked through with drying blood. All of it is Geralt’s, or the soldier’s, and the smell of it makes him sick. He shucks off his clothes, kicking them into the fire, ignoring the startled look Geralt throws him as he does.

“Your clothes —” Geralt starts.

“I have others,” Jaskier says through the quick expansion of his ribs. He’s panting, he realizes, teetering close to panic, so he takes several long moments just to center himself in the sound of the fire and Geralt shifting behind him.

It’s a close thing. He fetches more water, cleans his hands and arms and Geralt’s face and neck. The Witcher allows him, blinking under his ministrations, tilting his chin this way and that at Jaskier’s gently prodding fingers. Thankfully, his chemise and smallclothes are blood-free, so once the two of them are clean, he wiggles under the covers at Geralt’s side, burying himself in them, shutting out the world the best he can.

He doesn’t know how long they lay there together. But after a while spent dozing, he feels Geralt roll closer and an arm wrap around his waist, heavy and warm and protective. Some part of him makes to argue — Geralt should be resting, not comforting — but he can’t bring himself to do it. He relaxes, curling closer to Geralt’s chest, matching his breathing to the slow rise and fall of the Witcher pressed against him. He can feel Geralt’s breath tickling his hair and his rough, sword-worn fingers at the small of his back, and yet he isn’t scared of what this may mean.

He’s never been scared of Geralt. Never when he’s fighting monsters, drenched in blood and guts and stinking of rot and magic. Never when he’s fighting men, either, even though the speed with which he dispatches them should frighten something primal within him. Geralt is unnatural, a being created for a singular purpose, and yet there never has come a moment when he looked at the Witcher and felt fear at the slit-eyed stare looking back. 

Not even now, when he’s at his most vulnerable, with Geralt wrapped around him. Never could he be scared of Geralt. Never could he be scared of what he feels for him, even as he fights it back down his throat. He can’t express it, can’t bear the thought of breaking this fragile thing between them, but he’s not scared.

He’s not scared.

He’s not.

Geralt sighs against him. “I know, wildflower,” he says, a smile in his voice, and Jaskier sleeps.


	4. i have what i can’t want

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how many times can i hurt jaskier and still make it fluffy i wonder?

“Jaskier!”

His voice bounces across the field, echoing into the fog and dissipating after a long couple moments. Men groan and cry, a sad, out-of-tune chorus of voices and plodding, dying heartbeats. A horse screams in the distance, wailing like an apparition. It pierces the mist, sending lances of primordial fear down his spine.

The battle is just finished, then, if the horses aren’t yet dead. He’d stumbled upon it while coming down the blue mountains to resume work after a long three months at Kaer Morhen, riding into a periphery farming town that had somehow managed to avoid the carnage only barely.

It wasn’t a terribly big place, but it was big enough for an inn and a tavern to exist separately. A stable sat squat and new next to a windmill, and all around the main square of the town was a radius of tiny homes. They had sod roofs and space between them to have gardens, plump full of shiny produce. Drying racks for fresh kills sat outside some of the bigger homes, nearly all of them heavy with a stretched deer or boar corpse, and nearly all of them abandoned this early in the morning. 

But what drew the townsfolk away wasn’t a pleasant day in or some local celebration. It’s the smoke from a battle a ways down the hill, long blackened and finished, now just a chore for the mourning locals to take care of.

“What happened?” he’d asked. A crowd had gathered at the edge of town to look down the hill at the billowing smoke of dying fires and the wilting polearms attached to war carriages. It’d been a battle like any other, he’d imagined, with a handful of witnesses that was lucky to have survived it.

It made him sigh. Humans wouldn’t change, not now or anytime soon. War was too much a part of them, overshadowing whatever part of them that could also be kind and honest and caring. Monsters had more honesty between them, and Geralt was beginning to see how he was beginning to teeter across that hair-thin line more and more.

“Nilfgaard,” a woman had said. She’d stood at the edge of the crowd, wringing a handkerchief in her hands — blue and white. She’d been waiting for someone and they hadn’t returned. Geralt didn’t think they would. 

“When?” He has an idea. The fields have just caught from the embers of dying torches and flaming arrows, and the death calls of the horses speak more than enough. But he wants to know, at least so he can plan to avoid it if there may be reinforcements marching on the way.

“They came during the night,” the woman said. Her voice had trembled. Smoke billowed up the hill where a wheat field had caught fire, blowing into her unblinking eyes. When she’d finally turned to look at him, the dirt on her face had been tracked through with tears. 

And then she’d stopped. Stared. Looked up at him like she’d just seen someone she hadn’t seen for a long time, and yet the recognition in her watery green eyes was unmistakable. 

“You’re the White Wolf,” she’d whispered.

Unease gripped his stomach. “Yes,” he’d said. People only recognized him for bad and worse things. He was the White Wolf, but he was also the Butcher, and on any given day he was both instead of either. “I’m Geralt of Rivia.”

“The bard,” she’d said quickly. She tugged at the sleeve of another woman beside her, grabbing her attention away from the dying things below them. “Ali, didn’t you see him last night?”

The second woman — Ali — nodded. “He’d stopped for only a few minutes to rest, and then he went down the hill on his way. But then —“

“ — the armies came,” the first woman said frantically. She turned back to Geralt. “He’s tall, with brown hair and blue eyes. He sang about you — he’s your bard, right?”

_ His bard.  _ His bard had been here only hours before, travelling to gods know where. He’d stopped in this town, strumming and singing, likely charming whoever he could for a spot of coin. He’d stopped here and then walked right down that hill into the rush of swords and screams —

He’d spurred Roach before giving a proper response to the women shouting after him. He kicked her down the hill, past burnt fields and scattered corpses. Some men had tried to run up the hill to escape the conflict and hadn’t made it. Arrows stick out of their necks and knees, their swords scattered in the scorched grass catching glimpses of sunlight through the smoke and fog. Their stink only gets worse the closer he gets to the battlefield, the thundering of Roach’s hoofbeats a stark staccato to his slow heartbeat.

Jaskier was here. Jaskier was here, he’d passed through town, he’d walked down this hill and been crushed between the encroaching armies. Master Jaskier was nothing more, now, was nothing more than a legend of his own with a legacy not his own to live on for him. Geralt couldn’t possibly live up to that legacy, couldn’t possibly make up for the incredible amount of space Jaskier took up in this bleak, dark world, couldn't possibly be the beacon of light his friend had always been —

“Jaskier!”

Still his name echoes. Roach picks her way through the dead, her hooves sinking into the wet, blood-soaked earth. The stench of the bodies is almost too much, but he can’t bring himself to cover his mouth and nose — he needs to look out for the bard. He smells so sweetly of lavender and honey, a scent he would never forget, not in his uncountable years. He swings Roach around in a loose circle, tries to see past the glimmer of plate armor in the clearing fog to find what Jaskier may have worn to such a small, out-of-the-way place. He’d only passed through, after all.

Would he have worn a silk doublet? Would he have been travelling far to be so removed from the comforts of civilization? Had he been going to find Geralt, out here at the edge of the mountains, wandering so far from the creature comforts of the city because he couldn’t have the patience to wait?

The thought dogs him for far longer than it should. He keeps an eye out for colorful fabric or the unmistakable shape of a lute. He’d try to find Jaskier by scent, but the smell of death is far too thick to find anything so sweet as Jaskier’s cologne. He can’t even smell Roach, and she rolls underneath him as steady and true as ever.

She seems to sense his growing anxiety. She snorts and plods on, being careful to avoid the dead. Some bodies are tangled with each other, locked in the throes of battle even in death. Others are pierced through with polearms and javelins, and still more have died on swords, their blood caking the steel black. Carts carrying arms lie toppled over, and towards the back of both armies — if they could be considered armies now, dead and forgotten already as they are — lie the cindered bodies of the front-liners, soldiers dead before the fight could even properly start, frozen mid-stride as they lay scattered in the dirt.

He manages to find the road leading up to the town he’d just been in beneath the grime and soot of battle. It’s trampled over, but it’s the way Jaskier would have taken, so he wouldn’t have hidden far. There are no trees nearby, but there are overturned carts and the hulking bodies of dead horses. If Jaskier is alive, he’s hiding.

If he’s not, he’s soon to find him anyway. The primal fear at the thought nearly makes him sick. 

He slides off Roach and takes hold of her reins so she won’t spook and bolt. The earth is dense here, packed down from so many people using the road down the hill to go to Novigrad and Oxenfurt. A trade route, perhaps, down from these hunting villages to the cities on the coast. But even then, the dirt is soft, and with every step comes the metallic scent of blood.

“Jaskier,” he calls once more. Another horse screams, far away, but closer, someone groans. Geralt steps over a few mangled corpses, torn to shreds by dogs, and finds an upturned cart. 

“It’s Geralt,” he says softly. The cart is partially scorched, but still intact. A horse lies dead between the shafts at the front, broken as they are by a ballista round. A sword sticks out of its split-open neck, its mouth open in a long silent scream. “Jaskier, if you’re there…”

Another groan. He circles the cart, finding a spot where the wheel on the right side had broken off and wedged underneath the top of it. He manages to get his hands underneath it and heaves, straining only long enough to get it unstuck from the blood-soaked earth. It crashes as it falls away, and underneath where it had been is a curled up body clutching a familiar instrument.

“Jaskier,” Geralt breathes. He crouches and runs his hands over his back and sides, cradling one behind Jaskier’s neck. Jaskier starts, scrambling up onto his hands and knees, whipping his head around until his frantic stare meets Geralt’s.

“Oh, Gods,” Jaskier stammers. “Oh, gods, you’re here, y-you’re here —“

“What happened?”

He stands, tugging Jaskier up with him. Jaskier stands on wobbly legs, and for the first time Geralt can see the extent of the battle on the shaken bard.

“I didn’t hear them,” Jaskier manages. His clothes are torn and dirty, and his hair is matted on the right side with crusty blood. He doesn’t flinch when Geralt raises a hand to feel the knot under the blood, but he does tilt to one side, as if his balance is off. Geralt brings him close so he can lean against his chest, which he does without comment. 

Having him close, and alive, eases the panic gripping him, but only just. He can smell Jaskier’s cologne under the sharp, sour fear overtaking them both, and he wants to drown in it after going so long without it. 

“You didn’t hear two armies coming together in the middle of these fields?” Geralt says incredulously.

Jaskier’s tone turns petulant — a good sign. “They didn’t stop for me for a second, you dolt. I saw them too late, and tried to run, but they didn’t care. I got as far as here before they collided. And then I — before anyone could truly see me —“

He swallows thickly. He looks around him for the first time, taking in the sheer amount of carnage he just narrowly avoided becoming a part of. Geralt grimaces and whistles for Roach, placing his hands on the bard’s waist when she stops next to them.

“We’re going back up to the village,” Geralt says. “I need to see that you’re alright.”

Jaskier stammers, but he doesn’t say anything recognizable. He shakes like a leaf in a strong wind, and has a hard time sitting still even when Geralt lifts him up into the saddle. Geralt puts his lute in his hands to give him something to do, but the chords he strums are tuneless and without meaning. Shock has fully taken hold, so Geralt wraps his cloak around him to block out most of the battlefield and urges Roach back up the hill.

It should concern him, how easily seeing Jaskier like this scares him. He hadn’t noticed before, hadn’t had time to examine the brewing panic overtaking his gut and limbs when he had come down to search the battlefield before now. Yet now he feels too full of energy, like he normally does after downing a potion before a fight. He feels even more on edge even though his bard is safe in his saddle and relatively unharmed. 

But maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what’s wrong. It feels oddly like Jaskier is an extension of himself, like there’s a part of him wandering around that he has no control of. He wants to protect this part of himself, and the hot flush of fondness he suddenly feels for the bard nearly knocks him off his horse.

Of course, he’s a Witcher, so he doesn’t. He internalizes it like he does everything even as it clenches around his chest and squeezes far too tightly for him to breathe properly. Jaskier is here. Jaskier is safe. There’s nothing to worry about now.

At least, he desperately wants to believe it. He  _ needs  _ to.

Roach is just as unsettled as he is. She canters up the hill, snorting and barely containing herself as she dances sideways with nervous energy. She’s used to battlefields and monsters, but this, Geralt’s unease and Jaskier’s blank-faced shock, has her startled. Geralt tugs on the reins to keep her in check but it works only barely, and he has to wrap a secure arm around Jaskier to keep him from toppling off her back as they crest the hill. His warmth is a small comfort that doesn’t ease either of their nerves.

When they get back to the village, the crowd is still gathered at the fenceline, looking down as if in shock as well. The two women Geralt spoke to are the first to move when Geralt approaches, and without being prompted, urge him down the dirt street to the inn.

“You found him?” the first woman asks. She trots beside Roach, careful not to get too close. Her eyes are frantic. “Your bard?”

Geralt nods. He tugs away his cloak, letting Jaskier peek out into the midmorning light. Up so high above the battlefield, the fog and smoke have lessened considerably, and Geralt can see fine gashes on his cheeks and fingers as he glances around, barely containing his panic.

“I need a bath drawn,” Geralt says when they get to the inn. “And whatever you have to treat swelling. My potions will kill him if ingested.”

Ali nods curtly and bustles into the inn before him. The first woman helps him get Jaskier down, then unloads Roach of his belongings before following him inside, careful not to rush as Geralt coaxes Jaskier to walk on his own. The bard does, yet he seems like he’s far away, clutching his lute to his chest and blinking far more than usual, his gaze unfocused. Geralt is afraid to jostle him out of it, so he moves slowly, keeping his hands lightly on Jaskier’s shoulders to steer him after Ali into a large room probably meant for travelling nobles.

She’s already begun heating water over the hearth to the left, so Geralt moves Jaskier to the bed and sits him down. Geralt takes his lute from his trembling hands very slowly, setting it against the side of the bed so it’s still within reach. When he kneels before Jaskier, the bard’s eyes finally lock on him, and the relief he feels could warm him through the worst winters.

The empty look in Jaskier’s eyes, however, douses that warmth almost instantly.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says softly. 

Jaskier blinks. He shakes his head as if answering a question.

“I didn’t hear them,” he murmurs. “I didn’t hear…”

“That’s alright.” Geralt skates his fingers back through the bard’s hair again, and this time Jaskier flinches when he grazes the headwound. “Let me take a look. What hit you?”

“I don’t know,” Jaskier says. Ali sets a bowl of warm water and a rag at Geralt’s knee, giving him a concerned look as she does. Geralt nods to her in thanks and reaches down to wring the excess water out of the rag before dabbing it gently at Jaskier’s hair. “I was just walking. It was in the evening, after I stopped for a rest. I was trying to get to the highway.”

“Why?”

Jaskier looks at him guiltily. He doesn’t need to speak for Geralt to know he’d been trying to follow him. Or, at least, anticipate his arrival. Their meetings were always pre-planned before the Witcher went up to Kaer Mohren for winter, but to inadvertently be a part of Jaskier’s near-death —

Geralt frowns, taking the rag away from Jaskier’s head. It’s rusty with blood, old and fresh, so he rinses it out and folds it before pressing it against the wound. He doesn’t want to think about that. Jaskier is here. He’s safe. Geralt can protect him now.

“Hold it here for me,” he says. Keeping his voice level is hard with how much raw emotion is trying to leap up his throat. Jaskier obeys slowly, wincing at the pressure. Geralt smiles a little to show his thanks — he doesn’t miss the wide-eyed look Jaskier pins on him when he does.

He stands and helps Ali pour the near-boiling water into the tiny wooden bathtub in the corner of the small room. Steam curls against its surface, and it smells like arnica. Ali smiles at him as he sniffs it, holding out a palm with a little vial of oil that smells much more strongly of it, and he can’t help but smile back. She’d been thoughtful enough to care for the bard without being asked, and that’s the moment Geralt can finally relax his guard against these strangers in this strange town.

They truly mean no harm. She wants to help, and when he turns, he finds the second woman from before standing in the doorway with a fresh stack of towels and clothes in her hands. She smiles, too, a little wobbly and with repeated glances towards Jaskier, but she enters the room without hesitation and places the clothes on the end of the bed.

“I asked the apothecary to come take a look at him,” she says softly. “For his wounds, and the shock.”

Geralt nods. He hadn’t thought to get anything to aid humans on his way back from Kaer Morhen — his pack was woefully empty of anything that would help anyone but himself. Not even diluted Swallow would do anything for Jaskier’s bleeding and shellshock. It would just end up killing him.

“Get something warm to eat, too, if you can,” he says. “I’ll get him clean and see if there’s any other wounds.”

She nods, and her and Ali leave the room with worried glances thrown over their shoulders. The door clicks shut, bringing some sense of privacy, but Geralt can hear both women hovering in the main room of the inn, speaking softly to each other. He turns to Jaskier, who is blinking confusion up at him, and begins to undress him.

Jaskier’s nose wrinkles, but he doesn’t fight him. “I can do that.”

“Your head is bleeding,” Geralt says patiently. He pulls off Jaskier’s boots, setting them aside, before working on the buttons of the man’s dirty doublet. Blood soaks the bottom hem of it, darkening the light green fabric into something nearly black, radiating out from a thin rip in the silk. He hadn’t smelled the wound underneath it until now. “And this, too.”

He pushes the doublet off Jaskier’s shoulders, revealing a blood-damp chemise underneath. He tugs it free from the hem of his trousers, and underneath he finds a grazing wound left by a sword. Clean, but shallow, just a slash through skin and muscle.

“Jaskier,” Geralt sighs. The smell of blood is almost too thick for him to breathe. Jaskier looks suddenly ill.

“Please, just —” he says, then stops. He squeezes his eyes shut as if dizzy. Geralt lifts him up without another word, taking off his trousers and smallclothes and then picks him up. Jaskier grips his armor like his life depends on it, his fingernails catching in the studs, and Geralt pretends his chest doesn’t ache with how the bard clings to him before he lowers him into the water. 

The water clouds with blood almost immediately. Jaskier is not too wounded, but the one on his side is deep enough to weep, and Geralt takes care to pass a rag over it gently as he dabs away any dirt and caked-on blood. Jaskier keeps the other rag pressed to the side of his head, wincing only a little as feeling comes back to his limbs, his shaking subsiding as he warms up in the water. He keeps one arm wrapped loosely around Geralt’s shoulders, letting little space grow between them, but Geralt doesn’t mind. The bard’s skin begins to smell like the arnica oil Ali had infused into the water, clearing away the sharp metallic tang of blood, and with it comes a sense of safety.

Jaskier is here. He’s safe. Geralt can protect him. He repeats these things in his head over and over as he lifts Jaskier out of the water and dabs him dry with the towel Ali’s friend left for them before helping the bard stand on his own so he can dress. He smells nothing like blood or death anymore. He isn’t bleeding anymore. He’s here. He’s safe. Geralt can protect him.

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier says quietly. The sound of his voice breaks Geralt out of his stupor of guilt, making him blink and look down at his friend (is that what he is? Is that all he is, now?) as he sits back on the edge of the bed. The look of shock still hasn’t left Jaskier’s normally animated features. “I’m sorry, Geralt.”

He kneels in front of Jaskier, folding himself down onto the wooden floorboards as if in meditation. Jaskier looks truly despondent now, like his mere existence was a hindrance — and maybe one day, not so far in the past, Geralt would have believed it.

“You couldn’t have known,” he says. He isn’t a hindrance. Not then and not now. Never a hindrance. He wants to say that, wants to reassure him, but all that comes out is — “Jaskier.”

Maybe just that name, that sweet nickname, is all that he needs to say. Since finding him under that cart, Jaskier looks the most like himself, even dressed in peasant’s clothes and with scrapes and bruises up his arms and palms. He smiles a crooked smile, one filled with that youthful spark Geralt is sure will never leave him no matter how old he gets. Geralt rests a palm on his knee, trying his best to convey the press of emotion he feels behind his teeth still going unsaid.

_ I’m sorry. Don’t go. Let me protect you. I love you. _ It hits him, then, what it all means, and he hopes to the gods Jaskier will one day understand.

But he can’t say it. Jaskier slides his hand over Geralt’s and he hopes the bard gets it — the soft look he pins on Geralt is possibly answer enough without saying anything. It could mean  _ thank you,  _ but Geralt hopes it means more, too afraid to move or speak to ask. 

The apothecary comes bustling in, smelling of fresh green medicine and tilled earth. She doesn’t hesitate to push Geralt out of the way so she can see Jaskier’s wounds better, unafraid of what he is and who he is. He doesn’t wander far, watching attentively as she lifts Jaskier’s shirt and properly cleans the graze before wrapping it in clean cotton gauze. She’s gentle, her old hands knobby yet sure of her craft, her voice raspy and kind.

“Poor lad,” she says. “Should have stayed the night, silly boy.”

“Silly me,” Jaskier says. His eyes are on Geralt, though, and there’s a wry smile on his lips.

The apothecary turns his chin with her fingers to get a good look. Geralt unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth to finally speak as she frowns something fierce.

“It bled a bit when I cleaned it,” he says.

“Hit his head, but it’s not bad,” she answers. She turns Jaskier’s face so he’s looking at her head on. “Do you feel dizzy, boy?”

Jaskier’s brow furrows. He sways when he tries to stand, and the apothecary tuts. He sits back down, blinking rapidly.

“Hit it rather bad, then.” She produces more gauze, and just like Geralt had, dabs the wound. It comes away with spots of blood, but nothing to worry about, and she says as much as she rubs a sweet-smelling poultice over it, matting Jaskier’s hair to his skull.

“Don’t wash it out until tomorrow,” she says. She glares up at Geralt as she stands — she’s small, barely coming up to the center of his chest, yet her presence demands attention anyway as she wags a finger at him. “Keep an eye on him, Witcher. He’s like to fall and hit his head again if he’s left alone.”

“Hey,” Jaskier whines.

She turns a sharp look on him. “Am I wrong?”

“Nothing wrong with getting a little exercise,” Jaskier mumbles, though he shrinks at her light swat to his arm. 

“Rest,” she says assertively. “I’ll be back in the morn to check on you.”

Geralt has to suppress a laugh. She’s as thin as a birch and not nearly as tall, but she commands as if the mere sound of her smoke-rough voice could move mountains. He supposes he isn’t far off as Jaskier nods and, seemingly satisfied, she packs her meager things — she’d come with hardly anything at all, as if she’s done this thousands of times (she has) — and leaves them alone, closing the door quietly behind her.

She patters down the hall and starts speaking to the two women in the inn’s main room in a language he can’t understand. Local tongue, maybe, but he tunes them out, turning instead to Jaskier as he begins to fidget, his fingers picking at the rough edges of his shirt sleeves, looking around the room again as if seeing it for the first time.

“It felt like I was there forever,” he says after a long while. Geralt sits beside him, keeping a few inches between them for some sense of propriety he doesn’t feel. A large portion of him wants to wrap Jaskier up in his cloak again and hold him close. Jaskier takes a shaky breath that he feels it in his own bones. “Just — the sounds of them dying, Geralt—”

“I know,” Geralt says. “It’s alright.”

“I’ve seen you fight,” Jaskier continues. “I’ve seen you kill so many things, including people. To have it scare me like this is almost out of character, isn’t it?”

“Not if you were caught in it. Jaskier, they were  _ armies _ .”

“But it’s not different —“

“It is,” Geralt insists. “There were horses and men in armor, and gods know how many archers readying for battle. You can’t expect yourself to know how to react when all you’ve seen is one lone Witcher fighting from afar.”

“Geralt —“

“Jaskier.”

He tries to pour as much feeling as he can into his name, tries to convey what he feels in his core through the training beaten into him so long ago. Witchers can’t feel, the legends say, there is no emotion in their stone hearts. They harbor no ill will or grudge, and they don’t feel joy or love, too. So why does he feel this way? Like he’s lighter than air and heavier than lead at the same time? What is it about this, about seeing Jaskier this way, about finding him like this and feeling such odd things suddenly so strongly?

_ I’m sorry. Don’t go. Let me protect you. I love you.  _ There it is again. Those three words. They meant nothing before, if he thought them at all. There hadn’t been a moment before today when he would look at Jaskier and feel like he was flying and drowning at once. 

“Just —“ He stops. What can he say? He’s never been good with words. He wishes he could open up his ribcage to expose the soft core of him so that Jaskier can finally  _ understand _ . “Don’t apologize. I’m just glad I found you.”

There. That was comforting, and he feels it, too. He is glad. Finding Jaskier alive had been relieving and heartbreaking. He was  _ happy _ they were sitting here having this absurd conversation, instead of what could have been had Jaskier been just a little too slow. His wounds could have been worse, he could have bled out, he could have been shot by an arrow or trampled by a horse. Many things could have happened, but instead they were here, and Geralt is so incredibly happy for it.

Jaskier picks up his lute, and Geralt notices his hands aren’t shaking anymore. Barely an hour has passed since Geralt had him trembling in the saddle in front of him, and he’s taking in what happened and compartmentalizing. His blue eyes look up at Geralt as he plucks at the strings, forming chords and scales, a soothing, meaningless melody filling the quiet of the room, a damn sight better than the tuneless fiddling of a terrified man finding small comfort in muscle memory. 

“You’re right,” Jaskier says. “I shouldn’t have said that. I think — I think it was just the shock.”

Geralt finally manages to free the ice from his limbs. He raises his arm and wraps it around Jaskier’s shoulders, bringing the bard against his chest and burying his nose in his clean, damp hair. The smell of blood is sharp in his nose but it’s hardly there, overcome with the sweet arnica and the natural scent of  _ Jaskier _ . 

“You’re alright now,” Geralt murmurs. He can’t help himself now, not with Jaskier warm against his side. Even through the weight of his armor, he can feel him there, slotting against him just right. 

Jaskier nods minutely. His lute disappears, and he turns, his fingers curling around the curve of leather encasing Geralt’s sides. His arms fully encircle him after a quiet moment of hesitation, and for the first time they’re entangled together, and it feels right.

It’s a drastically different feeling than having Jaskier against him in the saddle, trembling and frightened, wounded and far, far away. He’s doing this because he wants to — Jaskier is doing this because he wants to. Nearly a year ago they found each other again after Geralt had done his absolute worst to push Jaskier away, and instead of finding him dead — or not finding him at all — he’s here. He’s safe. He’s alive. Geralt can protect him.

“I think,” Jaskier says quietly, startling Geralt. His calloused fingers curl tighter against the rough surface of Geralt’s armor, scratching and catching on the studs. Geralt holds him tighter, too, turning his face behind Jaskier’s ear, breathing in the familiar scent. The scent of home. “I think I love you.”

He knows. Gods, he knows. Jaskier is far more perceptive than Geralt remembers him being, surprising him more and more with every day. A weight suddenly leaves him and all at once the emotion Geralt keeps bottled up, stamped down, hidden away in that stone Witcher heart the legends say he has comes pouring out.

Jaskier is not afraid. He isn’t afraid either, now. Not now that Jaskier is braver than he.

“You think?” Geralt says. His tone is teasing, and he can feel Jaskier huff a laugh against his cheek as he turns his face, too. “Or you know?”

“I know I do,” Jaskier says. “Is that alright?”

Geralt hums. He leans back enough to raise a brow at the bard, lifting his chin with a curled finger under his chin.

“It’s more than alright,” Geralt says. “You’re always more than alright.”

To say this is the softest he’s been with someone is an understatement. He’d wanted to think that the man he’d been with Yennefer was some form of soft — was some form of warm and caring for her in the way he feels for Jaskier. In a way, he probably was, but he knows that the two of them are tied together by magic and not necessarily by their hearts. He cares for her, he wants her in his life, he wants to prove to her that he’s more the man she wants him to be than what he’s been for her — 

But this. This press of lips that is so gentle and cautious, a question as much as an answer. Jaskier does not push, does not take more than he is comfortable with giving. He is more angular than Yennefer, there’s morning fuzz on his cheeks and a roughness to his lips that is wholly unfamiliar, but the smell and feel of him, of having his hands skate up his sides and frame his face, of having his lute-worn thumbs brush under his eyes and his breath in his ear is just like home. It’s familiar after so many years being together that Geralt is dizzy with it, and when they part after a few long moments, he can’t help but smile.

Jaskier blinks at him, those clear eyes taking him in as if for the first time. He’s the gentlest someone has ever been with Geralt, treating him like the most delicate of silken webs. But instead of ensnaring him, he merely takes what Geralt offers and nothing more, the unnatural tug he feels towards Yennefer because of the djinn’s magic entirely absent. The song his thudding heart beats for Jaskier is a slow one, one borne from years of unknowingly nurturing such feelings. He can hear the answering beat from Jaskier, the smile on his face and the words on his lips an assurance of what may have been inevitable. 

“I think you’re right,” Jaskier says. He still smells like blood, just a little, and of the poultice on his skull and the bath that warmed his skin. But he’s here. He’s safe. He’s alive. Geralt can protect him. “You’re more than enough, too, you know.”

Geralt can’t speak. Words often fail him, but now they’re absent entirely, his mind drawing a blank. Before he was so sure of himself, but now?

“Speechless, I see,” Jaskier teases. “I have that effect, you know.”

_ That _ draws speech back to him. “Don’t puff yourself up that much.”

Jaskier smiles, all teeth and warming cheeks. “Well, it’s not every day I surprise you. I’ve done so twice now today.”

Geralt leans their foreheads together, sighing. His bard will be the death of him, but he’s alright with that. He’s realizing he always has been. 

“Don’t surprise me like that again,” Geralt says. “I’d really like to find you in a tavern instead of a battlefield next time.”

“How about we don’t separate next time?”

There’s a thought. One that excites him far more than it should, and really, how did he think what he felt for Jaskier would be anything less than this?

“I think that’s a good idea,” he says. 

Jaskier beams. “Fantastic. Now I won’t have to lure you to me with my possible demise.”

Geralt grimaces. He tugs Jaskier closer, and with a contented sigh, the bard settles against him. He isn’t bothered by Geralt’s rough edges, isn’t afraid of his swords or his otherness. He doesn’t shy from what Geralt must do to survive — instead he embraces it and immortalizes it. He’s realizing that maybe what he’s been searching for has been under his nose all along, and the thought comforts him.

He’s here. He’s safe. Geralt can protect him. He’s been Jaskier’s all along, and to finally realize it is a relief. A part of himself finally slots into place, right in Jaskier’s capable hands, and he hasn’t felt more right with the world than he has right now.

——

“Someone is quite pleased with themselves.”

This isn’t how he’d imagined finding Yennefer, but then again, she was a force to be reckoned with. And one he wasn’t entirely sure about still, so when she sits beside him in the crowded tavern with a full wine glass in her hand, he bites back the smart comment that comes to mind.

However, her barbed remark isn’t aimed at him. She’s looking across the crowd to the bard sitting on a stool, enchanting the crowd more effectively than she ever could with just his voice and his lute. Geralt doesn’t follow her gaze — it hasn’t left Jaskier all night.

“I may have had something to do with that,” he says into his ale. He can’t help preening when she finally gives him an exasperated sidelong glare. 

“It’s about time,” she scoffs. “Gods, Geralt, you’re dense enough as it is.”

“To be fair, it wasn’t exactly planned.”

She scoffs again. “What ever is with you two?”

He shrugs. He can’t fault her that assumption. The Path is unpredictable, and Jaskier even moreso. To say he could control either would be a downright lie, and at this point, he’s passed trying to lie to either Jaskier or Yennefer.

But this is also the first time he’s seeing her since the mountain. She’d gone where he couldn’t follow, and now that they’re here together, he feels on edge. 

She senses this, naturally, and waves a dismissive hand at him. “I think you know what to say.”

He does. He’s had this rehearsed since before he kissed Jaskier, and to say he felt guilty would be an incredible understatement.

“I’ll find another djinn,” he says. “I’ll unbind our fates. To tie them together was unfair of me, and I will spend many lifetimes fixing it if I have to.”

He finally turns to look at her as she sips her wine. She doesn’t look back, but her attention is on him, he knows. The effects of the djinn, maybe, but it could also be Yennefer. 

“I will hold you to that,” she finally says. Violet eyes pin him to the spot when she looks at him, promising a quite painful end should he default on his end of the bargain. If there even is one, which there likely isn’t. 

He dips his chin in acknowledgement. She seems satisfied, finishing her wine with a graceful tilt of her head. She sets the glass down and stands, smiling down at him, looking truly amused for the first time since he’s met her.

“I did think this would happen, you know,” she says, sly. “You and the bard.”

If Witchers could blush, he imagines he might be right about now. “You did?”

“Mm,” she hums. She waves a hand in the air vaguely, gesturing as if between Geralt and Jaskier there lies a bond kept hidden from everyone’s eyes except hers. “He has a certain magnetism, you know. And you both do compliment each other quite well.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. Yennefer seems to take pity on him anyway and lays a hand on his shoulder, capturing his full attention away from Jaskier. The look she levels on him could maim if she so chose.

“Do take care of him,” she says, her tone more warning than friendly advice. “I would like to avoid killing one of the last handsome Witchers to roam the Continent. 

“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” he says without thinking. After a moment, he finds that the words are true. He couldn’t hurt Jaskier, not now. He’d end his own life before even thinking of harming the bard.  _ His _ bard. 

Yennefer smiles, satisfied. “Good. I shall see you soon, then, Geralt of Rivia.”

He bows to her as much as he can sitting down. Her smile turns genuine, and with a flourish, she turns away. She nods to Jaskier when he spots her across the tavern, his fingers and voice never faltering, and then she disappears outside, likely portalling to wherever she goes when she isn’t being mysterious. Jaskier’s surprised stare flicks to Geralt, and he holds up his ale, smiling. Jaskier relaxes, and for the rest of the night he sings about Witchers and Witches and swallows and bards, and not once does he sing about heartbreak.

Not anymore.


	5. and want what i can’t have

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so im incredibly sorry for how long this took to get out. editing it was a nightmare and i still dont like it, but here we are. im also under evacuation orders in california due to wildfires, so that kept me finishing this as well. hopefully the next chapter wont be too far behind, and again im sorry! 
> 
> this chapter in particular deals with a headcanon of mine: that physical affection comes easy to geralt and jaskier. theyve known each other a while, so knowing how to comfort each other comes with it, and this next step in their relationship amplifies that. i imagine this isnt so long after the previous chapter — maybe only a few weeks — but affection is easy to give when youve both craved it for a while ;)

Some things don’t change.

Geralt is a Witcher. His purpose was laid out before him centuries in advance, set in blood and stone a legacy that would be fulfilled and broken before his birth. Witchers before him created that legacy, and humans before him would shatter it, destroying what could have been a respected, if dangerous, lifestyle that would see him immortalized for his sacrifices instead of his brutality. The Path was a Witcher’s, and yet it was created by mortal hands, and this line was the one Geralt walked every day with an ease groomed into him from the moment his mother left him abandoned at the side of a road.

(Jaskier wishes he could have been there that day. To see what Geralt could have been —  _ would  _ have been — haunts him every day. All dark hair and wide eyes and an innocence to him that was absent now — he wishes he could have been there, if nothing else than to be the only other person that would remember him that way.)

The Path takes them to cities and villages and squat little homesteads, a monotonous trend that would be boring if it weren’t filled with monster-slaying in between. These things don't change either, as Geralt still stumbles back from hunts bloody and disgusting and more often than not needing a caring hand to patch him back together. Geralt is anything but reckless, but he is still a man, and the comfort of kindness is something he seeks out even when grouchy.

Which, in the wider scheme of things, is one of the things that  _ does _ change. That seeking; that thirst for kindness freely given. Jaskier had always given it before, but now that things have  _ changed  _ —

“You keep coming to me like this and I’m going to think you like it.”

“Hm,” Geralt grunts. He tips his head back obediently at the gentle touch of Jaskier’s fingers at his chin, relaxing back into the bath as if it wasn’t just as horrendous as the kikimore guts in his hair. 

Which,  _ eugh. _

“Really,” Jaskier sighs. “Use your words, darling.”

Geralt decidedly doesn’t for a long while, which is fine. Washing out entrails from his hair is nothing new, and Jaskier can almost say he’s used to it by now. The hot water hides the sliminess, and a large part of him enjoys turning the Witcher’s hair a beautiful silver again after all the time he’s spent cleaning it.

It helps, too, that Geralt is nude. It really, really helps.

“Eyes up here, Jaskier.”

Jaskier snorts. “Your eyes are closed.”

“Hm,” Geralt hums again. One golden eye winks open, peering up at him upside-down, pupil thinner than a hair. Sunlight streams across his face, warming his pale complexion, and even with the stink, Jaskier can’t help himself.

He plants a kiss on Geralt's hairline, right at his widow’s peak. He’s warm from the bath and the sun, and he’s beginning to smell like lemongrass as Jaskier’s fingers work the soap into his scalp. The Witcher smiles with a quirk of his lips, then twists in the bath, returning the kiss with one on Jaskier’s cheek.

This, too, is new. Affection earnestly sought and given. Geralt is not one for words, but he is one for gestures and soft touches. There are parts of him softer than even the most spoiled of nobles hidden away in the jagged cage underneath his skin. Parts of him softer than anything Jaskier has known, and he cherishes these things as much as he longs to protect him.

Because Geralt is  _ vulnerable.  _ A soft Witcher was as good as a dead one, and Jaskier is beginning to see the things Geralt must do to guard against the world.

He’s soft caresses and warm breath in the morning. He’s rough hands and gentle kisses and a patient, understanding voice when Jaskier is strung high or frustrated. Geralt doesn’t push, doesn’t take what Jaskier is not comfortable with giving (which isn’t much, but he wants to cherish this, wants to watch this flower bloom between them rather than snatch it up too quickly only to watch it wilt), and still gives far more than is expected of him. Jaskier has known Geralt for a long time, and seeing this new facet of him is something he holds closest to his heart. 

But some things don’t change. 

Some things never change. 

A Witcher’s destiny was predetermined, and for that Jaskier resents it. Geralt hasn’t aged a day since he met him all those years ago, and he imagines he won’t until he himself is old and grey and too frail to pluck at his lute. He dreads those days, but Geralt doesn’t, simply looking at him oddly like the thought of old and grey and frail Jaskier was an impossibility.

“Or maybe it doesn’t matter to me,” Geralt had said, and oh, what a thought. Age meant nothing to a man that wouldn’t see the end of his years for many centuries to come, so maybe it really didn’t matter.

(It does. But it also doesn’t. Jaskier can’t hate Geralt for something beyond his control.)

So they travel. Geralt plans their excursions, and Jaskier performs at every inn and tavern they come across, earning his keep far more often out of habit than any real need to prove his worth. He hasn’t needed to for a long time now, but having the extra security is nice, and it allows him to purchase things Geralt won’t for himself. Like a new braided leather tie for his hair, or new boots, or fresh glass vials to replace the ones broken during hunts. The guarded expression on Geralt’s face disappears every time Jaskier produces such gifts, giving him more reason than the last to keep getting them.

There’s other things, too, like the press of their bodies huddled under the blankets at night. That hasn’t changed — they’d been doing this for a long time too, now — but the intention is different. Having Geralt there because he  _ wants _ to be there still surprises Jaskier every morning. 

He thanks Geralt by kissing him because the words get caught in his throat. He has a feeling the Witcher knows anyway by the soft look on his face and the warmth in his eyes when Jaskier leans in for just one more press of gentle lips. 

Things change. Things don’t. They’re learning together, navigating each other’s love languages as if they were more precious than their expressions. Geralt is soft touches and warm words and a presence so true and constant Jaskier doesn’t know what he would do if it were to disappear — even though some dark part of him already knows. He doesn’t want to let go of it now, and he has a strong feeling that Geralt doesn’t either. 

——

“Okay, but what  _ kind _ of contract.”

“A lucrative one.”

“Geralt. That’s what they all say, and yet here we are, ass-deep in mud and rain, with not a crown to our names. This better be good.”

Geralt gives a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, bard. It is.”

“Ohh, we’re back to  _ bard  _ now!” Jaskier says. “Should I call you Witcher then? I know how much you like it. Having a title that all but replaces your name is quite charming, isn’t it?”

Once again, Geralt sighs. But he’s smiling, however small, and it makes Jaskier giddy. 

“Just come along,” Geralt says. “It’s not much further.”

He slows just a bit so they’re walking side by side, wrapping an arm around Jaskier’s shoulders, his cloak coming around with it to better block out the rain pelting his head. Jaskier ducks under the provided cover, trying very hard not to vibrate out of his skin at the close contact.

Roach ambles beside them as they trudge through the storm, her steps slow and easy. A town looms out of the mist, the tall stone walls encircling it slick with water and a small platoon of guards standing in what little shelter the arched entrance provides. Jaskier is positive Geralt must have told him what the name of this place was, but he can’t remember it — only that they’re somewhere near Brugge, and they somehow arrived at the same time one of the worst storms this part of the Continent has seen arrived as well.

“You the Witcher?” one of the guards shouts through the hum of rain hitting the ground. He must have seen Geralt’s white hair, or his eyes — or he realized that no one else in their right mind would be travelling at this time of night in the rain.

“I am,” Geralt calls back. They approach the guard, Jaskier still tucked in Geralt’s cloak at his side.

The guard is a severe looking man, but his eyes are calm as he looks them over. He jerks his head towards the town inside the walls, then whistles for his other men.

“Follow us,” he says. “Lord Marzcin has been expecting you.”

Jaskier snorts. “Expecting us. At this late an hour?”

“Jaskier,” Geralt warns.

“I’m only saying,” Jaskier says, haughty. “We’ve met plenty of nobles wanting a job, but how many wait up for us  _ personally _ ?”

Geralt urges them both forward, Roach clacking behind them. “It’s only a job. We finish it, we get paid, we go on our way.”

“Because it always works out like that,” Jaskier mumbles, unimpressed. “You remember Madam Anais, right?”

Geralt jostles him. “I can leave you out here to freeze,” he rumbles. His tone is teasing, bringing warmth to Jaskier’s face.

“No, I’d rather not die of hyperthermia, thank you. Please, Master Witcher, lead the way. It’s rather wet out.”

Geralt sighs long through his nose. But he keeps his arm around Jaskier, providing warmth and protection, never letting go even when they make it to the town’s idyllic little castle sitting on a hill just above it and Roach is taken away to be pampered by the Lord’s stablehands.

They only separate when they’re within the castle walls, shaking rain and mud from their clothes and boots and hair. They’re both properly soaked, with Geralt looking more and more frustrated about it and Jaskier feeling like he’d rather enjoy a nap in a furnace. The guards urge them on, however, so they walk with scant inches between them, craning their necks to take in the finely decorated walls and plush rugs underneath their feet.

The guards lead them into a wide chamber with a hearth inset on the far side, tables and settees scattered around. It likely entertains guests on fine occasions, but now only one man (and his retinue of guards) stands near the hearth, hands clasped behind him and a rather slick smile on his thin, pale face.

“I’m glad the storm didn’t keep you for far too long,” the man says. He’s dressed in ornate silks, greens and blues that glitter in the firelight, shiny beads at the seams and a decorative dagger tucked into the sash around his waist. He’s got on a loose robe around him to keep out the draft, and his boots are shiny and clean, as if he hasn’t gone outside in the last two days this storm has been raging.

Jaskier is uneasy. Everything about this man screams danger — more so than usual nobles. He desperately wishes he’d wrung more information out of Geralt before coming here, but he suspects if they turn around and book it now there’d be worse consequences.

“You asked for me?” Geralt asks.  _ That _ makes Jaskier uneasy as well — if people ask for Geralt, it’s usually very, very bad. 

“Yes,” the man says. “I’m surprised you answered so quickly. Have you nothing to do this far south?”

“Don’t normally travel this far south.”

“Hmm.” The man’s sharp gaze darts to Jaskier. He tries not to fidget, yet his fingers find the strap of his lute case anyway. The man’s eyes are unnaturally green. “And you brought a companion? I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

Jaskier manages to bully his limbs into a shallow bow. He pulls a wide smile on his face and every ounce of charm his body contains.“Master Jaskier. A pleasure.”

“A bard,” the man says, arching a brow. His smile turns on Geralt. “Well, I didn’t specify you  _ couldn’t  _ bring company.”

“He’s with me,” Geralt says. His tone is hard, brooking no argument, and it swells Jaskier’s chest with warmth. 

The man shrugs. “Suit yourself. You’re correct — I called for you specifically. I’m staging a hunt next week, and I’d like you to be my proxy. Discreetly, of course, but what better way to win a hunt than hire a Witcher?”

Jaskier scoffs. “Why have a hunt at all if you’re just going to win it anyway? Seems counterproductive.”

The man’s horrible green eyes snap to him again, but Jaskier doesn’t flinch. Geralt is warm and still beside him — there’s nowhere he’d rather be than here.

“Staging a hunt is a morale builder,” the man says after a beat. “I’m sure you’re aware of Nilfgaard marching north.”

“I’m sure you’re also aware of Nilfgaard beginning peace talks with the northern kingdoms,” Jaskier counters.

“Out of necessity.” The man makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, a faintly disgusted look crossing his face. “But that’s besides the point. My people need something to do, and sending knights off to fight monsters is the perfect escape.”

Geralt sighs heavily beside Jaskier. “A hunt implies you know what you’re hunting.”

His question goes unspoken. The man smiles again, devilish. 

“A griffin,” he says.

Jaskier tries not to laugh, but he can feel the absurd smile spread on his face anyway. “My good sir, if you need a hunting party for a griffin, morale must be  _ very _ low here.”

The man holds up a finger. Then two. Then three.

Geralt growls next to him. Jaskier balks. “Why hasn’t another Witcher come to take care of this?” Geralt snaps.

“I haven’t allowed it,” the man says smoothly.

“So you want Geralt to kill three griffins on his own,” Jaskier says through his teeth. “Do you want him to die? Do we know if this is a mated pair? A pair with a pup? You can’t be serious.”

The pride that radiates from Geralt is palpable, warming him again, settling some of the anger snapping up his throat. But only just, because the man is still smiling like he knows much more than he’s revealing. He very likely does, and Jaskier wishes he could tug Geralt around and stomp out of here.

They’re trapped, though, and Geralt is nodding before another word can be edged in. Jaskier sighs, and the man smiles wider, clasping his hands together.

“Magnificent,” he says. “The hunt isn’t until next week. You both can stay here — I’ll have rooms made up for you both —“

“Room,” Geralt rumbles. “One. We don’t need two.”

The man raises a careful brow, but his face holds no judgement. “Very well. Ubert?”

A guard standing nearby straightens. “Yes, Lord Marzcin?”

“Have the chamberlain arrange a room for these gentlemen. The one facing the vinyard — this storm should let up before the hunt in a few days so they can enjoy it.”

Ubert bows. “Yes, Lord Marzcin.” He turns and leaves through a pair of wooden doors, clanking and creaking in his armor.

Marzcin grins. “It’ll be but a few minutes. Thank you both for your time, and your willingness to participate. A few days and you’ll be off doing what you do — how exciting!”

“Exhilarating,” Geralt deadpans. Jaskier can’t fight back a snort.

“Very,” Marzcin says. A severe man arrives, dressed in finery that doesn’t disguise the nasty look on his face. Marzcin turns to him expectantly.

“The room for the sirs has been prepared,” the chamberlain says with a bow. Jaskier suspects it already was, with how quickly he responded. “Their bags and belongings have been brought from the stables as well.”

Jaskier relaxes some. Geralt does as well, but only just. The promise of privacy is enough to make them both eager to leave.

Marzcin gestures for them to follow the chamberlain. “Have a pleasant evening, gentleman. Breakfast will be brought to your room in the morning if you prefer.”

“Please,” Jaskier says. “We’ve travelled a long way and would like to rest.”

Marzcin’s smile turns amused and Jaskier hates it. “Of course. After you.”

Geralt waits for Jaskier to lead, then follows him closely through the stone halls after the chamberlain. The wind whistles through rattling window panes, thunder rumbling just outside, making Jaskier shiver. His clothes rub against him uncomfortably and water still drips down his back from his soaked-through doublet, his boots creaking with every step. Geralt is not much better, carrying an extra forty pounds in gear and weapons, though his face doesn’t show it until the door to their room is locked behind them and they’re finally left alone.

“What the  _ fuck,”  _ Jaskier hisses, rounding on Geralt. “That guy has to be a vampire! Or a ghoul! Or a shapeshifter!”

“He’s not any of those things,” Geralt sighs. “He’s just a noble with a lot of money.”

“And how much are you getting, anyway? It better be substantial.”

Geralt rolls his eyes and begins shedding his gear. The room is small but warm, panelled in by rugs and tapestries with a hot fire in the hearth across from the wide bed. There’s a patio, like Marzcin had said, with the curtains drawn to reveal the storm outside through the glazed doors. Jaskier feels only marginally better having another escape route.

“It’s not our first time on a hunting party,” Geralt says. He dumps his swords next to the saddlebags that were brought up, so far avoiding getting too much mud anything.

“Yes,” Jaskier agrees. “And the last one we were on, you got attacked the first night. And the one before that, we weren’t even doing for  _ money.” _

“It’s not like you’re hurting for it, Jaskier.”

“No, but he’s clearly using you.” Jaskier sighs. He places a hand on Geralt’s arm, stopping him with only a gentle touch. Geralt peers at him with amused resignation, but his eyes are tight and his body is held oddly, like he’s tensed up for a fight.

It’s how he’d been after the mountain. Strangely on edge, like tiptoeing around Jaskier had been like avoiding a dragon. Instead now the dragon was an unknown man with a whole lot of money and a bizarre way of building morale with his townspeople.

“Geralt,” Jaskier says softly. “Tell me you see what he’s doing with you.”

A muscle in Geralt’s jaw twitches, and he nods. “I’m aware.”

“Then why don’t we go after these imaginary griffins ourselves?”

Geralt huffs, his lips twitching into a barely-there grin. “Because those imaginary griffins need to die an imaginary death, and having two dozen soldiers to keep them busy makes killing them easier.”

Jaskier pats his chest, his skin slapping on the wet leather. “I’ll give you that.”

Geralt leans forward and presses a warm kiss to his wet hair. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

Jaskier tips into his chest, pressing his face into the damp skin of Geralt’s neck. “Please do. It’d be awful to sing of your death in Brugge, of all places.”

Geralt’s laugh rumbles through them both. “Agreed.” His arms curl around Jaskier, fingers gently tugging at ties and buttons of his cloak and jacket. “Come. Warm up and rest. I don’t want us sleeping in when these people are awake in the morning.”

Jaskier shivers at the implication. “You’re right. Ugh, they’d probably eat us.”

“Mm, maybe you. You taste better.”

Jaskier smacks him in the shoulder. “Listen, you! At least I pamper myself! Rolling around in the mud in a swamp doesn’t count as a sauna experience, Geralt!”

Geralt sighs, put-upon. “Fine. Now get undressed. I can feel how cold you are from here.”

“Ohh, not ten minutes alone and you want my clothes off!”

“Jaskier.”

“Yes, yes, the big scary Witcher wants to go bed,” Jaskier sighs. “Why have fun when you can travel around with a fun-sucking Witcher?”

Geralt sighs again, but his expression is fond. Jaskier smiles his best winning smile and starts helping him with his armor, setting everything on the rug in front of the fire to dry. Geralt waves his hands away once he’s down to his leather jerkin and trousers, pushing him towards the bed. He takes the hint and undresses as well, wiggling feeling into his fingers and toes as the warm air hits his damp skin. His clothes go near the fire as well, and when they’re both down to absolutely nothing, Geralt does a once over of the room to make sure it’s locked and follows him into bed.

He slides his arms around Geralt’s shoulders, bringing them both together into a comfortable embrace with the Witcher’s head resting on his chest. Geralt’s skin is cold, as is his hair, the white strands turned grey with how heavy they still are with rainwater. Jaskier scoops it away from his face and neck, tugging the blankets up to replace it, then twists his hair in a loose braid so it'll stay out of the way.

Geralt sighs, long and deep, relaxing against him. “It’ll be quick. I promise.”

Jaskier huffs, frowning only a little. “You say that, but I have a feeling we’re going to get sucked into something and we’re going to have no choice but to intervene. Three griffins, Geralt! That’s absurd!”

“Maybe,” Geralt says. “But what if it isn’t?”

“I know. Your Path demands you see it through.” He drops a kiss to Geralt’s hair, skipping his fingers across relaxing shoulders. “Just, please. If it starts to look bad, we leave. No amount of coin is worth getting twisted around some Lord’s finger.”

Geralt tightens his arms around Jaskier. “Fine.”

He doesn’t sound pleased, but Jaskier will take it. He squirms until he’s a little more comfortable in the unfamiliar bed, Geralt’s weight settling atop him. The Witcher can easily see the door, and his swords are within reach should something happen — and in the saddlebags at the foot of the bed is Jaskier’s dagger, hidden away between potion bottles and hardtack.

It’s enough to lull him into a shallow sleep, plunging deeper when Geralt starts to warm up. The last thing he remembers is Geralt’s soft breathing and the slow thump of his heart against his own, Marzcin and the griffin hunt and the strange proposition fading away into a symphony of nothing.

——

He wakes to Geralt gently shaking him, urging him up with soft lips against his cheek and callused fingers around his shoulder.

“Mm, too early,” Jaskier mumbles. He burrows his face into the pillow, and those lips travel around to his ear, chapped and familiar.

“Up,” Geralt murmurs. His voice is low, easing him awake. “The storm has passed. We may be able to find a room in the tavern in town if we hurry.”

Jaskier manages to squint his eyes open. There’s grey light bouncing off the stone walls through the patio doors, and if he listens hard enough, he can pick out the faint drip of water and the stillness of the morning outside. Geralt is already dressed, kneeling beside him in bed, but he’s blurry. Jaskier rubs his eyes and tries very hard not to fall back asleep.

“Why on earth would we risk being cursed by Marzcin by leaving,” he says flatly. His voice is rough with sleep and he  _ really _ wishes he woke with Geralt around him. The bed is entirely too big and cold. “He has Roach, anyway.”

“Got her saddled up,” Geralt says, the edge of a laugh in his voice. “Jaskier. Get up, let’s go. I’d rather risk being cursed than eaten alive in this place.”

“I thought they were eating  _ me,” _ Jaskier whines, but gets up. Geralt helps him dress because he’s entirely useless this early in the morning, then wraps him in his cloak and shoves his lute case in his hands. Jaskier grumbles.

“Too early for this.”

Geralt tugs him so he’s following close behind. “Stop complaining. You can sleep once we get to the inn.”

Jaskier perks up at that. “All day? I’m still quite exhausted, darling, I’m afraid I might need several hours more of relaxation with a certain Witcher.”

He can hear the eye-roll even with Geralt turned around. “Just follow. I bribed the stablehand to keep Roach ready at the gate.”

Jaskier trots after him down unfamiliar side hallways and through the service door the maids and guards use to navigate out of the castle. It isn’t a big castle, but it’s dense in rooms and winding pathways, and it’s several minutes until they’re passing through the kitchens empty of any cooks or servants and out the door into a back courtyard.

Geralt leads him back the way they’d come the night before, though it’s still just as unfamiliar. The few guards up at this hour pay them no mind, and soon Jaskier is climbing into Roach’s saddle with Geralt following behind, urging her down the cobbled street to the sleepy town down below.

“We’re going to get cursed,” Jaskier mumbles.

“No, but we will be followed,” Geralt says. “I’ll stay awake, listen for company as the day goes on.”

“Probably not a good idea to piss off the Lord paying you to kill three griffins.”

“Also not a good idea to be seen staying in his castle for three days by the hunting parties forming in town.” Geralt presses a warm kiss to his shoulder. “It’ll be fine.”

Jaskier sighs, long-suffering. “Why do I get the feeling it won’t be?”

Geralt hums. He doesn’t answer, and that both frightens and soothes Jaskier. He tries not to panic as Geralt finds an inn off the main road — a rather nice place, the charming stucco exterior crawling with ivy and a cast iron sign hanging above the door reading “Morning’s Rest” — and pays for a room for three days. He sets up Roach in the attached stable while sending Jaskier in with their things, and the inside of the inn is just as homey, with dark wood walls and the floor clean and polished. It’s high-end, much nicer than anything they normally stay in, with a polite girl standing at the counter just inside and a quiet barmaid wiping down glasses on the other side of the bar across the room.

He dawdles inside until Geralt comes in, then follows behind him up the stairs to their room. This is much nicer, too, much more welcoming than the castle with the wood floor and furnishings, and Jaskier gratefully dumps their things beside the bed and promptly face-plants onto one side.

“We’re going to die,” he says, muffled into the pillows.

Geralt hums. “You are. Remember, you’re tastier.”

His monotone gives nothing away, but it makes Jaskier laugh all the same. He squirms out of his clothes, managing not to leave the bed as he does, Geralt watching him with a soft fondness in his eyes. He burrows into the sheets, shielding himself from the first rays of sunlight beginning to lighten the room. 

“Fine, you fool,” Jaskier says. “Don’t let them eat me while I sleep, I’d like to witness my own death so I may write a song about it.”

Geralt’s mouth quirks. “I suppose I can do that. Wouldn’t want to waste an opportunity.”

“Aw, you  _ do _ know me!”

The Witcher sits on the edge of the bed and leans down. Jaskier hurries to meet him, their lips coming together in a gentle kiss.

“I do,” Geralt says softly. “Now sleep. I’ll stay awake.”

“Remember: wake me up before the fighting starts.”

Geralt huffs. “I’ll do that.”

——

Thankfully, nothing happens.

Well,  _ fighting _ doesn’t happen.

The arrival of Lord Marzcin, however,  _ does. _

“Vampire,” Jaskier mutters.

“Shut up,” Geralt snaps. 

“Ghoul. Or shapeshifter.  _ Shapeshifter,  _ Geralt, they sometimes go evil!”

“Not usually. You know better, Jaskier. Now  _ shut up.” _

Marzcin smiles all-too-serenely at them as they bicker quietly. “I’d thought my hospitality was more than enough,” he says with a sweep of his hands around them. He certainly doesn’t mean the inn or the town, but with a crowd of folk watching them, he can’t outright say that. “What made you change your mind?”

Geralt straightens, rising to his full height. “We still accept the contract.”

“It’s castles, you see,” Jaskier cuts in. Marzcin’s stare flicks to him. “I can’t make much coin when the company is paid for. A Master Bard has his calling.”

It’s not entirely wrong — or right, either. Marzcin seems to see right through the half-lie, but is either too kind or too conniving to tear it apart.

“Very well,” he says smoothly. “I expect to see you beside me when the hunt starts — I wouldn’t want my winning hound led astray by foxes.”

His glare stays firmly on Jaskier. Jaskier manages to smile quick and easy, dropping into an overdramatic bow even as his heart thunders up his throat. 

“We’ll both be there before the first horn sounds,” he says. “You have our promise as Witcher and Bard.”

“Don’t disappoint me,” Marzcin says. However, it’s directed solely at Geralt, his green eyes far too hungry. For what, Jaskier can’t even begin to describe, but he feels himself bristling all the same. The feeling doesn’t go away even when Marzcin turns in the street and disappears around the bend in the road, followed by his guards and the slow parting of townspeople around him.

“I take the vampire thing back,” Jaskier mutters bitterly, dropping the smile as soon as Marzcin is out of sight. “He’s definitely just a snobby noble used to getting what he wants.”

Geralt gives a sigh that’s far more tired than from simple lack of sleep. “I’m regretting this more and more.”

People are staring, so Jaskier tugs him back into the inn. They’d planned on making a slow circuit of town to learn where everything was, but with people still gawping, it’s probably not such a wise idea, now. “How much did you say this job was again?”

“Didn’t,” Geralt says.

“Okay,” Jaskier says, dragging out the syllables. “How much is it?”

Geralt’s nose wrinkles. “Two thousand.”

“Crowns?”

The Witcher tips his head. 

Jaskier sighs. “I guess we’re stuck here.”

Geralt nods again. “Suppose so.”

Jaskier shoves him into bed the moment they enter their room, warmed by the idea that Geralt has to allow himself to be pushed around in the first place. “Then sleep. If we have to spend three days cooped up, we’re going to do it well-rested and without inciting violence with the bar patrons.”

Geralt shoots him a reproachful look. “ _ You _ start bar fights. I end them.”

Jaskier puffs his chest out. “I end them too sometimes!”

“With a bloody nose,” Geralt deadpans.

“It’s heroic!”

Geralt rubs his eyes. “I’m going to sleep.”

“Please do,” Jaskier says. “I’d quite like having you in bed again.”

This time, the Witcher’s glare is soft and without resentment. He tugs Jaskier closer by the hem of his doublet wordlessly, encircling him in his arms when he steps closer. Jaskier recognizes the hesitation there, the unwillingness to continue on and the unspoken offer of packing their things and getting out of here as quickly as Roach will carry them. There’s a lot of money on the line, though, and giving it up simply because the Lord that gave them the contract seems to be weirdly possessive of Geralt —

“It’s just a hunt,” he says, shrugging a shoulder. Geralt hums, nosing against his jaw and beginning to fall back, bringing Jaskier on top of him on the bed. “How bad can it be?”

——

Bad. Very bad. 

Very, very,  _ very _ bad.

“Fuck,” Jaskier mutters.

“You said it,” Geralt says, flat and unamused. 

“I know what I said, you great dolt. I just didn’t expect —“

“This?”

Geralt needn’t gesture around them. Hunting parties from all over the northern kingdoms are here, from small local bands of villagers barely armed enough to fight drunk Redanians to huge bands of horses and men, bristling with swords and polearms, their armor slick and shiny and their horses impatient and ill-tempered. Not one party seems to be less than five people, and every single one of them glances at them as they walk by with a combined sense of awe and disgust.

Jaskier steps closer to Geralt’s side. Roach wickers beside him, her ears flattened and looking for all the world like she’d rather not be here. Her owner seems to feel the same way, but Geralt looks like that all the time, so it’s hard to tell if this is anything special.

“Two thousand crowns,” Jaskier murmurs, more to himself than Geralt. “Two thousand crowns and then we’re out of here.”

Geralt scoffs. “You make it sound so easy. It’s just three griffins, Jaskier.”

Jaskier has to try very hard not to kick anything. Mostly himself. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Geralt hums, stepping impossibly closer, their sides pressed together as Geralt tries to offer enough comfort without being too obvious. “It’s alright,” he says softly. 

He tries to soak it in as much as he can, but there are many eyes still watching them, so they both separate. He feels the loss acutely the whole way to Marzcin’s — rather large and ornate — tent at the center of the fallow field the hunt will start in.

Lord Marzcin is dressed finer than he’d been the night they met him, in reds and golds with shiny beads embroidered into every seam and surface. He glitters like an ugly pearl, if that were possible, and Jaskier finds himself trying not to laugh at the stark contrast between Geralt and the Lord.

Because Geralt glitters, too, in the slanted orange and pink light of the sunrise. The studs on his armor catch the light, gleaming with refracted rainbows as he moves, a dangerous sight but a beautiful one. He radiates passive indifference, also quite a difference from Marzcin, and Jaskier is privately glad he took the time to clean and mend Geralt’s armor for the reserved, powerful image he makes compared to the swell of armed parties gathering around them. 

But then Marzcin smiles, slick and hungry. He doesn’t see what Geralt is here for — he sees something else, something Jaskier barely wants to think about or dwell upon. He looks at Geralt and sees nothing more than a well-trained hunting hound, and Jaskier wants to turn them both around and never come back to Brugge.

“You cut quite a figure, Witcher,” Marzcin says in greeting. “I’m surprised.”

“We’re here to work,” Geralt says, without any inflection whether he cares for the back-handed compliment or not. Jaskier knows he doesn’t, but keeps his mouth shut. “Are you travelling with us?”

“Naturally,” Marzcin says. “What’s the point in building morale if I'm not there to build it?”

“The collective camaraderie that comes with killing monsters?” Jaskier says rather coldly. “We’d know a thing or two about that.”

“Of course,” Marzcin says. A strange look crosses his face, as if he’s fighting off a laugh or eye-roll. “My apologies.”

Jaskier bristles. “Listen, Geralt is here to kill something —  _ three  _ somethings — that if left alone, will kill a whole lot more people than a few hunting parties. This isn’t a game.”

“I’m quite aware,” Marzcin says reproachfully. “Are you?”

“I’m having a hard time deciding,” Jaskier bites out.

“Just point us in the right direction,” Geralt cuts in. He’s far from nervous, looking bored more than anything, but Jaskier knows better. “If we are to be discreet, I’d like a head start.”

Marzcin dips his chin. He’s quick to defer to Geralt, Jaskier realizes, easy enough to bend if Geralt is doing the bending. Jaskier is but a nuisance to this snobby Lord, and it drives Jaskier more mad than anyone of his ilk ever has. 

“The hunt will begin in the hills just beyond the fields here,” Marzcin says. “The griffins have roosted over the winter and I suspect a cave system further into the mountains is their lair.”

“Griffins don’t roost in caves,” Geralt and Jaskier say at the same time.

Marzcin smiles like that was the correct answer to a question he didn’t ask. His unnaturally green eyes don’t leave Geralt for a moment, and it makes Jaskier shiver with how hard he has to bite down on his tongue.

Geralt kills the beasts. They get paid. They’ll be on their way. It happens like this all the time, there’s no reason for it to be any different this go around — 

Marzcin puts a heavy hand on Geralt’s arm. Jaskier can feel Geralt bristle next to him — no one touches him. Not so casually or brazenly, and not with a grin like  _ that  _ on his face.

“Let’s get this hunt going, shall we?” he says smoothly. “We don’t want to keep them all waiting.”

He sweeps out the flap of the tent in a grand, flowing gesture, leaving them both standing there blinking. A rattle of horses and armor follows a short exclamation Marzcin makes about the hunt starting, some grand thing about doing this not only for the thrill of it, but the honor and valor that comes with doing it for the protection of their land and people.

Jaskier turns to Geralt. Geralt looks back, a frown on his face, looking very much like the day they first met. He had to go and kill three beasts because he was too poor to say no, and to be manipulated into doing it was just salt in the wound, now.

“We can still turn around,” Jaskier says quietly.

“And go where with what money?” Geralt sighs. He turns, holding a palm up that Jaskier takes. “Let’s go and get this over with.”

The procession of horses and hunting parties is far and away the largest either of them has seen in a long time, and the noise that accompanies them would scare off even the most formidable of monsters from their nests. Marzcin travels with a small collection of guards and hunters, with Geralt and Jaskier bringing up the rear, making far less noise but no less pompous about it, and while the trip to the hills would be a short one — only a day — Jaskier is dreading it already.

But only an hour has gone by when Marzcin reins his horse to keep pace with Geralt’s. It’s the first he’s spoken to either of them since leaving the tent, making Geralt cast a sidelong glance at Jaskier as their horses meander together. 

“Could still be a vampire,” Jaskier murmurs. The only thing stopping Geralt from kicking Jaskier out of his saddle is the lord currently inserting himself between them.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, Witcher,” Marzcin says conversationally, “what it would take to have you service my lands as a huntsman.”

The comment throws them both, though Geralt recovers quickly. “I’m a Witcher,” he says. “I don’t need a job chasing off wolves.”

“No, I suppose you don’t. But stability must be something you crave.”

“Indentured servitude doesn’t sound like stability,” Jaskier mumbles snidely.

“And neither does traveling with a troubadour,” Marzcin snaps.

“I’m here for a contract,” Geralt interjects, though he doesn’t raise his voice. The annoyance in his tone is palpable even through his normal monotone. “Not to discuss business prospects I can’t take.”

Marzcin waves a hand like Geralt hadn’t spoken. “After the hunt, I’ll have my current huntmaster speak to you. It’s much more than simply chasing off wolves, I assure you.”

“I’m not interested,” Geralt says.

“The coin you’ll be making —“

“I think we’ll be taking our leave,” Jaskier cuts in. “If you don’t mind.”

If Marzcin had been any other man, maybe this wouldn’t have been so insidious. If he hadn’t been a noble, or so adamant about Geralt taking down three griffins just so Marzcin could say he did it himself — maybe this wouldn’t have been so startling. Jaskier wants to think that, had this been any other day, they could have turned around and walked away and called it a lesson learned in the ways humans can convince themselves into odd situations.

But the way Marzcin turns to look at him, unbridled rage apparent in his eyes and fury building in every line of his body, sends shocks of fear right through Jaskier’s spine. Marzcin turns and looks at him and all he sees is a predator, and knows right at that moment he said the wrong thing.

It’s like looking into a snake's eyes, if Jaskier had to describe it. Marzcin raises his hand but he doesn’t register it, doesn’t hear the shift of men and horses around them until it’s far too late. He glances across to look at Geralt and finds he’s similarly transfixed, though only on Jaskier, and not Marzcin.

It brings him some comfort, then, that he doesn’t expect the blow to the back of his head until it’s too late.

——

He wakes in a familiar room.

Well, familiar enough. He didn’t feel too inclined to explore the room Marzcin had given them only because he didn’t feel the man’s hospitality was truly genuine and didn’t want to give him more attention than necessary. But the bed and hearth are familiar, as are the rugs he’s currently lying on, their bright light and colors banging against his temples where a nasty headache is beginning to form.

But as he tries to get up, he’s stopped by a boot pressing down between his shoulder blades. The weight of a man above him makes his ribs creak, but he swallows the whimper threatening to crawl up his throat as another man from somewhere behind him leaves in a jingle of armor after whispering something to the man holding Jaskier down.

“This isn’t how you treat guests, I hope you realize,” Jaskier says. He can keep down cries of pain, but smart remarks aren’t so easily swallowed. 

The man leans more weight onto him, and this time it  _ hurts _ . “Shut up, or I’ll gag you, too.”

Jaskier realizes his hands are bound as he tries to reach up and scratch at the man’s leg. He drops his arms and tries not to move, both him and the guard staying still for several minutes before the boot is replaced with the tip of a sword. Well, the threat is there well enough, so he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t move. 

The door clangs open another moment later, the guard that had left coming through with Marzcin close behind. He looks happy, if a man like him could be, his smile a nasty curl of his lips and the light in his eyes anything but.

He doesn’t step closer to Jaskier, however, thwarting whatever miniscule chance Jaskier had of attacking him to throw off the guard. He keeps a respectable distance, and the guard’s sword doesn’t waver from where it presses between Jaskier’s shoulder blades. This isn’t the first time he’s been captured, and it seems like these men are taking every precaution while maintaining the ability to gloat.

Jaskier is intent on destroying that at every possible moment.

“I imagine you want one or both of us for some kind of ransom,” he says, interrupting Marzcin right as he’s opening his mouth. “I’m sure you’re aware that capturing a Witcher and his bard doesn’t bode too well for your health.”

Marzin’s lips twitch into a nasty smirk. “Well. I was going to give you the benefit of knowing what’s going to happen, but I don’t think I will now.”

He motions with his wrist and suddenly Jaskier is being yanked up by the back of his doublet. He stumbles, shoved forward by the guard, and is forced out of the room after Marzcin by the sword at his back again.

“I don’t suppose you know a thing or two about hospitality,” Jaskier says.

“I do,” Marzcin says lightly. “And you will.”

The unsettling feeling gripping Jaskier’s stomach finally spreads to the rest of him, making him dizzy as it clutches at his throat. Geralt is still nowhere to be seen, and to wake without him, tied up and alone, frightens him. Geralt wasn’t easy to capture, and even if he was to be, it’d require a lot of resources and —

“You  _ planned  _ this!” Jaskier surges forward, stopped only by the guard keeping him secured. “You lured Geralt here with a promise of decent coin — you made it so he couldn’t say no because his honor as a Witcher  _ keeps him  _ from saying no —!”

The guard hefts Jaskier up with a strong grip on his clothes and shoves him through a heavy wooden door. His shoulder cracks against it, making him stumble and fall into a damp, dark room that looks akin to a dungeon if Jaskier is feeling the gritty stone floor underneath his cheek correctly.

“You’re right,” Marzcin says. He steps into the room, his footfalls echoing in the chamber. “I did all of those things.”

Jaskier struggles to get to his knees with his hands bound, but he manages it. “What could you possibly want with a Witcher?”

“They don’t get sick, they don’t age, they can’t get infections —“ Marzcin ticks off the reasons with his fingers, stepping around until he’s facing Jaskier. Something jangles in the shadows behind him, like chains scraping on stone, but the Lord keeps speaking over the noise for Jaskier to pick out what it may be. “— their stamina and strength are unparalleled, and magic doesn’t affect them. Having one would give me an edge over Nilfgaard, especially the White Wolf. You’ve made him quite famous, you know.”

“Then you know he doesn’t take kindly to being captured,” Jaskier grits out. “Our first run around with supernatural creature collectors this is not, Lord Marzcin.”

“But it will be the first time you don’t escape,” Marzcin says, and when he steps aside, Jaskier sees it.

White hair in the gloom. The shine of blood against pale skin, dripping quietly to the stone floor, overshadowed by the sounds of metal chains grinding against themselves. Marzcin turns towards the shadowed form with one of the oil lamps hung on the wall in his hand, shining just enough pathetic light on the familiar form slumped against the wall. If Jaskier could scream, he would.

It is not the first time Geralt has been taken. It’s not even the first time he’s been taken because of what he was — but it is the first time Jaskier has seen him this way. Never has he seen Geralt chained to a wall and beaten to the edge of his life, and never has Jaskier felt so angry. At Marzcin, of course, for luring them here and taking them, and at the guard laughing behind Jaskier’s back as he watches him take this all in and at the world for allowing such cruelty to exist; but at himself, too, for not pushing harder to leave, for not urging Geralt to find work elsewhere, for not begging him to think for himself for once and not what a Lord may dangle in front of him for meager scraps.

Jaskier hates this man. He watches as blood travels down twitching muscle in little black rivulets, dripping from wounds opened by knife and whip. He doesn’t know how long he’s been out, but it’s apparently been long enough, because not even his scrambling against the floor draws a stir from Geralt across the room.

“Geralt,” Jaskier pleads. He hears Marzcin laugh, but only barely, like they were far across a river from each other. An echo off water into nothing. “Geralt, please say something.”

Nothing. The Witcher is slumped with his arms spread wide, bearing his weight for likely hours. If Jaskier takes a moment to breathe, he can taste the smell of blood. 

“You,” Jaskier hisses, white hot fury snapping up his throat, “will  _ die.” _

“I have a hard time believing I will,” Marzcin says. He stops at a wooden rack, raising the oil lamp to a hook on the wall. He then takes a familiar sword off the rack, the blade ringing as he hefts it, its broad face whuffing through the air as he swings it once, twice. “He does have nice trophies. They will do, even as he may perish.”

He doesn’t know where it comes from. If he were to describe it in song, maybe it was the force of his unbridled rage and devotion for Geralt that had snapped him, or the inhuman strength people were capable of when experiencing incredible duress. He probably will, later on, but the thought is second nature and fleeting — by the time he has it, it’s already filed away, his mind jumping from it to the half-cocked plan his body is already committing to.

He lunges for the sword with his bound hands and wrenches it away from Marzcin, using the momentum of the backswing to bring it around on the guard standing at the door. This one is not wearing plate armor — Marzcin must be confident they need none — and he screams when Jaskier throws his weight behind the blade and sinks it down into his shoulder. Bone cracks and sinew runs slick against the bite of the steel, and easily as it went in, Jaskier swings it back up, letting it drop down again and again, managing two more swings until the man drops dead. When Jaskier turns around, he doesn’t stop, doesn’t yell for Marzcin to stop or cower or ask for some feeble demands; no, he is far too angry.

The sword comes down easier than breathing. Marzcin is not armored either, and he falls to the stone floor in a rushing clatter of beads and fine silks. His head thumps away, though the sound is drowned by Jaskier’s galloping heartbeat in his eardrums, and he only drops the sword when he’s reasonably certain his pulse doesn’t disguise the silence outside the room.

“Keys,” he mutters, dropping to his knees to search Marzcin’s body. Blood slicks out of his severed neck, pooling in a shiny puddle that reflects the lamplight. “You have to have —  _ yes!” _

He tugs the iron ring out of an inner pocket, two keys jangling against each other. There’s a thin dagger there, too, one he remembers seeing when they first met Marzcin — he takes it and twists it around in his palm backwards before sawing through the ropes tying his wrists together. When they fall away, he lunges towards Geralt.

“Are you awake? Geralt?” He manages to get the key into the lock around the Witcher’s wrist, releasing the first shackle. It drops with a clatter to the floor, muted only just from the pooling blood at their feet. Jaskier finds it doesn’t turn his stomach anymore. “If you can hear me, grunt or something — I can’t carry you out of here.”

He’s aware he’s babbling, but it helps ease the jitter in his hands as he unlocks the second shackle. Geralt must be awake because he catches himself on his hands and knees when the lock comes free, then without wasting much time, lunges up to his feet and begins grabbing his discarded gear.

“We have to go,” Jaskier urges. “They may have heard me —“

“They did,” Geralt rasps. His voice is worse, barely even a hoarse whisper. He shoves his steel sword into Jaskier’s hands after pulling on his armor haphazardly, giving him a sidelong look that speaks volumes.  _ Stay close, follow me, stay safe.  _ Jaskier doesn’t need to be told twice.

The urge to run comes to him naturally. He doesn’t remember the route they take out of the castle, only that it happens in fits and starts as Geralt navigates around rousing guards by ear. They find the corridor to the stables unnoticed, and mount Roach — who is still tacked up, with dried blood on her flank — when they find her. The cover of night protects them as they go, as does the patter of rain as thunder rolls above them. He’d been out for a while, then — maybe a day, or even two.

“Three,” Geralt manages after a while. Town is quiet, and they pass through without incident. Not even the guards stop them when they pass under the stone arch and onto the dirt road leading out towards the highway. Marzcin hadn’t told every armed man his plan, then. Only those that needed it.

“I find it hard to believe they kept me knocked out for that long, darling,” Jaskier murmurs. He traces his fingers down Geralt’s sides and back, the world slowly coming back to him. Geralt seems fine, if exhausted, but the cover of darkness hides any wounds he has very well.

“Check under your sleeves. They injected you with something I can’t identify. I can smell it.”

Jaskier does, and discovers a few bruised pinholes in the crease of his wrist. They ache, and now that he thinks about it, he does feel like he’d been kicked by a horse and rolled down a hill — possibly a sign of being drugged over and over. He grimaces, wrapping his arms around Geralt, pressing his face into the studded leather growing cold with rain.

“Just tell me you’re alright,” he whispers. He can feel Geralt breathe in, and out, and in again. Without hitching, without pain. “Please tell me he didn’t hurt you.” It’s a futile plea. He saw the blood, fresh and drying in turns. He knows that under this armor, Gerlt is hurting.

A hand covers one of Jaskier’s resting on Geralt’s hip. “He cut me to watch me heal,” Geralt says. “And to see if I bled the same color. But nothing bad, Jaskier.”

The hand squeezes his fingers. Jaskier squeezes back, hugging Geralt harder. 

They make camp after a few hours spent following the road. This isn’t like that time, months ago, when they spent the night running from a war party — Geralt is alert and in no worse shape than usual. He breathes deeply, scenting the air, and turns his head every once in a while to listen behind them. He isn’t poisoned, or drugged, and controls Roach with a strict hold on her reins to keep her from outpacing herself. They find a settlement of buildings as dawn is breaking over the horizon, giving just enough visibility to see it’s nothing more than a collection of outbuildings next to a farm, and after talking to the sleepy farmer and her wife, are allowed to make their beds in the barn with the solemn promise of not revealing their location to any passerby. 

When their gear is unloaded and the barn door is secured behind them, Jaskier doesn’t waste time in getting Geralt undressed. The Witcher huffs a laugh and allows it, then does the same to him, tugging him down into their combined bedrolls and blankets to check him over with careful touches.

“I should have listened,” Geralt says after a while. He flinches when Jaskier’s fingers travel over a swelling bruise over his ribs. Jaskier makes his touch lighter, though he doesn’t stop even as the reality of what had happened begins to set in.

“I would be angry with you if I wasn’t scared for you,” Jaskier says back, though with little heat. “For three days you were kept captive and I didn’t even know about it.”

“He wasn’t interested in you.” Geralt lays back, bringing Jaskier up into his lap, bearing his weight comfortably. Jaskier digs out a cloth and their waterskin and begins to clean his shallow wounds and the blood caked to his skin, revealing some scarred lines that have healed over the past few days.

“He could have just tossed me out.”

“Using you against me wasn’t an insubstantial motivator.” Geralt grimaces, and Jaskier stops, looking up at him and at the true fear the Witcher is trying to hide in his eyes. “Even seeing you unconscious would make me do a lot of things.”

Geralt pulls him closer, wrapping his arms around him, burrowing them both into the safety of the blankets. Jaskier allows it, but keeps them face to face, trying to pick through the emotions leaking through Geralt’s tone.

“He didn’t make you —  _ do _ anything, did he?” Jaskier asks. “Did he use me against you often?”

Geralt shakes his head. With a twist of his wrist, the oil lamp providing a sole, weak light in the barn winks out. He settles down, so Jaskier does too, but lets his hands wander. There’s much of Geralt still healing.

“Next time, we turn around,” Jaskier murmurs. 

A kiss is pressed to his hair. “Next time we turn around,” Geralt says. He takes up one of Jaskier’s hands in his own, threading their fingers together. “Thank you. For freeing me.”

“You’re quite welcome, darling.” Jaskier kisses Geralt’s jaw, reminding himself to offer to help him shave in the morning. His beard is rough with several day’s worth of growth. “And thank you for trusting me with your sword.”

Geralt hums. “You did kill a man with it.”

“I can do a few other things with it, if you so desire.”

“Later,” Geralt says, clearly trying to battle down a laugh. He squeezes Jaskier to him and sighs, relaxing into their bedrolls. “Sleep, Jaskier.”

He is tired, but he feels oddly alert all the same. Like something may leap at them from the shadows, something he can’t see or hear because of the dreary morning and thunder rolling outside. It may be the adrenaline coursing through him, but it’s also what he doesn’t know that keeps him awake. He wasn’t there for Geralt when he needed him. He wasn’t there when the Witcher was powerless and alone.

He doesn’t sleep. Geralt does, in fits and starts in the beginning, waking intermittently to see if Jaskier is still there and then falling away again when his fear is eased. Jaskier busies himself with wiping away the new and old blood, tending to Geralt as he rests, finding some whip marks that may require stitching when he wakes but discovering nothing alarming. Marzcin had wanted to stress test Geralt, but hadn’t pushed him beyond physical pain and maybe going a few days without food. 

All things that can be fixed, then, now that they’re out of there. When the sky lightens with true daytime, Jaskier finally lays down, curling up against Geralt’s chest and sighing deep. The Witcher’s arms come around him, and for the first time in hours, he feels safe.


	6. but for you i’ll try, i’ll try, i’ll try

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologise for how late this chapter is. my life truly flipped upside down, so this got put on the back burner. this chapter also jumps around a bit, so i apologize, but as always thank you for reading! i have some oneshots i wrote inbetween writing this, so i may start posting them. thank you for reading and let me know what you think!

The first night after the mountain, he wakes alone.

He doesn’t wake to the sound of music plucked from strings or a soft voice humming along the crisp morning air. The fire has gone out and Roach has pulled her lead and ants have gotten into his potion bag, making him frown, though he supposes it’s just his luck.

He wakes alone, and with the quiet of having to do so from now on. There isn’t a bedroll across from his own, lumpy with a body curled underneath it. A lute isn’t resting against the pile of bags and horse tack against the tree. There’s a noticeable lack of everything that made his mornings more than what they were, and for one brief moment he feels the enormity of what he’s done.

His one best friend is gone. Not dead or taken away — sent away by his own hand. He well and truly shattered what had been building between them, and he had no one to blame but himself. Jaskier didn’t ask for this— didn’t even deserve it— and not twelve hours later Geralt is wondering what sort of monster he must be to send his only friend away like he did.

(And up until now, Geralt wouldn’t have put a name to it at all, would have ignored it if it got him some sliver of peace. But Jaskier was not an annoyance. He wasn’t a hindrance. He realizes, as the morning dew soaks the knees of his trousers as he gets up, that Jaskier was the closest thing to a  _ partner _ that he’s ever had —) 

But wasn’t that how he was? He never wanted Jaskier around. Or, at least, he believed he didn’t. Pushing the bard away was easier than tolerating him sometimes, but was that his fault, or Geralt’s? Was it right of him to drive Jaskier away when really it was  _ Geralt  _ that needed a scolding?

Jaskier  _ was  _ his friend. They’ve known each other for so long it’s impossible to say they aren’t. Geralt can accept that, at least in part — it wasn’t like he wanted harm to fall onto Jaskier. He was annoying, and stuck his nose where it didn’t belong, and made it so godsdamned hard sometimes to even  _ think _ with all the humming and strumming and proselytizing — he was a walking migraine on the best of days and monster bait on the worst. Geralt could lose him sometimes and feel nothing of it, especially when they went long periods not seeing each other. In fact, it was a  _ blessing — _

No. He stops himself then, refusing to even think that word. It wasn’t, in any way, a  _ blessing _ to have him gone. The world is quieter, calmer, sure — more what it used to be before Jaskier entered it and sung refracted life back into it. The world made sense before he came, but it was also duller, softer, less vibrant.

Dead.

Maybe he was a monster, then. Maybe it serves him right to have nothing, now. Even Yennefer wants nothing to do with him after all that they’ve seen and done together. He wants to say he loves her, and that in itself is an excuse, but even then —

He ignores it. He isn’t a monster — he’s far from it. He did what he thought was best, so there’s no use dwelling on it. Jaskier wasn’t a nuisance, but he was in danger, and what he’d done was just in his best interest. Yennefer, unfortunately — well. 

It was her best interest, too. She deserved to know. He deserves this, now. That’s all it was — Geralt looking out for their best interests. 

(It was. That’s not a lie. It  _ was. _ )

He gets up like he would every morning, trying very hard not to look at his meager camp in the shade of the trees. Roach is flicking her tail not too fsr away, her lead dragging through the pine needles as she nibbles at the ones still green. She flattens her ears when he gets closer, jerking away when he reaches for her halter, giving more attitude than she had the evening before when he found her alone in the corral at the base of the mountain. 

“Don’t give me that,” he says. He tries for her halter again, and jerks her face up as gently as he can to get a good look at her.

She glares as much as a horse is able. Then she stamps her feet and shoves him with her head, throwing her weight against him as if to push him down.

He pulls on her lead while stepping out of the way of her shoving him again. “Knock it off,” he grumbles, but he doesn't have the heart to mean it. He deserves this, too.

He packs up whatever meager belongings he has — Jaskier had taken most of the rations, and honestly, he can’t blame him. His scent still lingers on his packs and tools, scattered between his things and mingling with Geralt’s own near-invisible scent. He’d be angry about this if it didn’t tighten something painful in his chest, something that fights very hard not to be ignored. It hurts worse than sleeping alone had, yet even that he won’t admit to himself now.

It takes considerable strength to throw Roach’s saddle over her back and turn away from the mountain for good. He’d been able to block most of what he’d done the day before, been able to smash it down and lock it away in a box deep where he couldn’t find it. But the images of Yennefer’s face when his secret was revealed — the images of Jaskier’s as something dark and vitriolic and wholly undeserved leapt from Geralt’s mouth and stung him deeper than any insult he was capable of conjuring —

He stops. He closes his eyes. Breathes very deep, calling upon the mirror-smooth and vice-like control that was beaten into him since he was a boy. It’s shaped vaguely like his mother, like Vesemir and like the other Witchers, too. Witchers whose faces are unknown to him now, but he remembers, and the calm they bring to him is just barely enough for him to spur Roach away from that godsforsaken mountain.

But only enough. When he gets far away, down the trail through the hills and finally, finally into the highway, he smells it again. Lavender and honey, sorrow and heartbreak. A scent so familiar to him he would follow it to its source if he allowed himself to.

Jaskier.

He turns Roach away. She huffs, but does as she’s bid, and instead of taking him north to the cities, he turns south to the kingdoms. There is business there he must do, tied up and knotted in this thing he refuses to name. It’s taken so much from him already, and he refuses to do what pleases him because it reminds him too much of what he so recently lost.

The smell of lavender and honey eventually fades away. Most things do, for a while, and maybe that kind of quiet is what he should have been concerned about all along.

——

“You don’t talk much.”

Cirilla is picking at the bones of her meal, staring at him from across the fire. He’d laugh, if he felt so inclined, but really he’s just exhausted.

“No much to say, I suppose,” he says. At her frown, he sighs, and holds out his hands. “What do you want to know?”

A lot of things, usually. Things he isn’t adept at answering. She seems to sense this and flicks her gaze away, towards his sheathed swords sitting next to him on the log.

“Maybe why you carry two swords?” she asks. Lightly. Conversationally. “Grandmother never told me what a Witcher was.”

“She was probably right not to.” Geralt sighs, rubbing his calve. It still stings, even a week later, from the fiend bite. Serves him right, maybe, that it does. His just dues for everything finally catching up with him.

“But she had to have known you’d come,” Cirilla says. “She had to — you made a deal.”

“The Law of Surprise isn’t a deal,” Geralt grumbles. “It’s a tradition of asking for what you didn’t have when you left home. Something you didn’t know you had before you left.” He frowns, thinking back to that night of Pavetta’s betrothal. Gods damn him, what was he thinking revoking the Law that night after seeing what it had already threatened to destroy?

“Like a baby,” Cirilla prompts, and her smile could light the darkest of nights. It threatens to melt Geralt, but he remains guarded to it.

“A baby,” Geralt cedes. “Or a sudden fortune from a relative dying. Or land, or a litter of kittens, or just a bushel of wheat. Many things are a surprise, Cirilla. Not always a baby.”

“But I was your surprise. Is that why you waited so long to come find me?”

Geralt raises a brow. “Is what why?”

“Because you didn’t think a baby was a surprise you wanted,” she says, slowly, as if he was daft.

Well. After everything, she’s probably right.

“I asked for the Law because Calanthe wouldn’t let me leave without payment,” he says. “And I wasn’t interested in her coin after she’d nearly killed me.”

“Yes, well. You are quite scary.”

She’s smiling. Such a mischievous smile shouldn’t exist on such a kind, little face like hers, but he finds himself smiling back despite himself, however small.

Why couldn’t he have been this way on the mountain, he wonders? Why couldn’t he have been this way with Yennefer and Jaskier, instead of bellowing like a beast with its tail between its legs? Why couldn’t things have been different? Why couldn’t he have found this little kernel of himself that was calm and kind when the people closest to him needed it most?

He swallows that bitter taste down at lessons not learned soon enough. He may never get a chance, now, but at least he had some slim margin to prove himself through Cirilla.

“I imagine that’s why you didn’t know about me,” he says. At Cirilla’s raised brow, he tilts his head. “Why I’m scary.”

Cirilla’s nose scrunches. “Maybe. But you aren’t scary. I can tell.”

She taps her chest. He gets her meaning, and it makes that bitter taste crawl up his throat again, threatening to choke him even as he swallows it back.

“I’m not good, either,” he says. “I haven’t been, lately.”

“You saved me,” she says quietly, proudly. As if anything he did to find her had been on purpose and not a string of violent and unfortunate events. “You’re taking me to my destiny — or, at least, someone who can help me train for it.”

“Yennefer is definitely more adept at this. She’s a better person than I, too.”

Cirilla frowns severely. He forgets, in moments like this, that she is court trained, with a perception of what is around her quite sharp for a girl her age. Only a week has passed and she already has him pinned — then again, he’s having a hard time grasping on who  _ he _ even is, anymore.

“I won’t hear of it anymore,” she says. “You  _ are _ a good person. You wouldn’t have come for me otherwise, or be taking me somewhere I’ll be safe. Don’t argue, Geralt.”

Geralt snaps his jaw shut. It’s the first time she’s used his name, and it’s said with such force behind it he isn’t sure it’s just the surprise of her sternness that silences him. He knows she has magic — his medallion hasn’t stopped vibrating since he found her wandering in the woods — but to feel the full effects of it, however unintentional on her part, is startling.

She seems to realize she has, and her green eyes go wide. “O-oh. Oh, it happened again —“

“It’s alright,” Geralt says as softly as he can. He reaches out and pulls her against his side. He can feel her thin, small hands curling into the creases of his armor, catching on studs. “You didn’t mean it.”

“You never told me,” she says in a small voice, after a long while spent sitting listening to the rustle of the trees. It’s not quite dark, but then again, Geralt can see much better than Cirilla can in the twilight. He imagines she can’t see much further outside the ring of light their fire casts. 

“Never told you what?” he hums.

He feels her shiver. He tugs his cloak around her, hiding her in a shroud of wool that keeps out the chill twisting through the treetops. She curls up against him, and for the first time in his life the warm coil in his gut at the contact doesn’t scare him.

(He wonders what he would have done if he’d accepted this earlier. If affection and love — if he dare put a name to this feeling, and right now, he very much wants to — could have come from this same place so much earlier, maybe he wouldn’t be where he was, now. Stuck in a forest with a girl he shouldn’t have abandoned, with no friends or lovers that wouldn’t turn him away or hunt him down for his trouble of simply  _ asking — _ )

“Witchers,” Cirilla murmurs. “What you are.”

He sighs. “I am — a weapon.”

Cirilla scoffs. “People can’t be weapons.”

“They can be when they’re made that way. Like soldiers, and armies.”

“But you aren’t an army. You’re just one man.”

He peeks into the folds of his cloak, finding glittering green eyes framed by dirty blonde hair. “Not a human one.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t worth anything,” Cirilla says. “Or capable of noble things. Like now, or like what you’ll do in the future.”

Geralt feels his nose wrinkle. Future? What does she know of the future? One moment they were talking about Witchers, and the next —

“You’ll see,” Cirilla says matter-of-factly. She curls up more, huddling against his side, settling down for the night in the most unlikely of places the world could find a Princess. “Soon, you’ll see.”

She falls asleep faster than she has in many days, dropping off into heavy and dreamless sleep. But unlike the Lion Cub of Cintra, her words do not fade away, leaving him helpless as they scratch at the insides of his skull. They refuse to leave him even as the sky begins to lighten, bringing with it another day of cruelty and hardship, lessened only by the tiny body pressed against his own keeping him warm.

He doesn’t have to wonder, then, what it would have been like had it been different. He finds that he’d known all along for a long time.

——

Cirilla is small and light enough that the two of them can ride on Roach without overburdening her. It’s not like they have much anyway, but after riding for a solid week without many breaks, Geralt doesn’t want to take the chance on breaking her now.

Because Nilfgaard is still advancing, and he is still quite recognizable. Cirilla is easy enough to disguise — giving her peasant’s clothes and hiding her hair under a cap serves well, even with her striking green eyes and the way she holds herself — but Geralt is not. He wears a sword at his hip instead of over his shoulder, and keeps his hair hidden under the hood of his cloak, but there isn’t much he can do about his eyes except avoiding looking up when he can. There isn’t much he can do about his armor, either, so hiding beneath his cloak will have to do.

It serves well enough, and he keeps off the main highways. He pays farmers and stables to sleep in the stall with Roach so they can avoid taverns and inns, and when he’s too tired to hunt, ventures into town alone to buy bread and jerky with Cirilla and Roach hidden in a thicket not too far away. War refugees are not uncommon even on less travelled roads, so to simply be recognized as one is easier, and sometimes he doesn’t even have to pay for the bread. People are kind to the poor when they want to be, and Geralt is well-versed in playing the part.

They sleep when they can and travel mostly in the day. Sometimes Cirilla sleeps on horseback, and sometimes she talks for hours on end. Nothing too important — mostly about her life as a Princess, the friends she misses and the things she wishes she could do — but it’s a small insight into what he avoided participating in for a long twelve years. He feels guilty, and maybe that’s what drives him most as he maneuvers them through small hamlets and barely populated villages to the relative safety of the northern kingdoms.

He knows, deep down, that it’s more than guilt, and he swallows that down as deep as he can.

Because he has a destination in mind. He hasn’t told Cirilla — and she hasn’t asked — but they have one last chance he’s banking on before moving into the mountains hiding Kaer Morhen. He doesn’t want to rely on it, but with winter finally settling in and the snow beginning to stick even as they get closer to Novigrad, he really has no other option but to try.

“I’ve never been to Oxenfurt,” Cirilla says as they trot down the highway. Wagons wheel by them, creaking with goods, the city that never sleeps running trade even as the snow banks begin to grow nearly to hip-level on foot. She twists in the saddle enough to look up at Geralt, blinking in curiosity. “Are we stopping for supplies?”

“For a friend, hopefully,” he says. He hopes his tone conveys nothing, even as his chest gives a pained, hot squeeze. He hasn’t been much of a friend, but he hopes that whatever they had before hasn’t been irreparably shattered from what he’s done.

And if it has? Well. He hasn’t gotten that far in his plan, but he hopes at least Jaskier won’t call for the guards and have them thrown into a brig for the night. 

“I thought we were going to Kaer Morhen,” Cirilla says slowly. “Won’t… won’t they find us if we stop?”

He hugs her closer to him, wrapping his cloak tightly around her. How her small voice is capable of wounding him, he isn’t sure, but it spears right through him and leaves his soft core achingly open for the world to pick on like carrion.

But they have to try. This is a last, desperate effort to both make amends and find some safety before the snows get too bad — he can’t fail Cirilla after all he’s done now to protect her.

He can’t fail her when he has no one else to lose.

“The snows are too high, Cirilla,” he says, trying for soft and understanding. He knows she’s scared, but he can’t afford to lose her to hypothermia, either. He’s too late in trying to get to Kaer Morhen. “We have to stay here.”

The hurt confusion that radiates off of her smells like woodsmoke, once a comfort but now a cue for him to let her process on her own. He’s learned quickly that while she is a strong girl, and will do anything for her continued safety and survival even though she doesn’t quite understand why, she is still a girl. Twelve years old and this is the first she has seen of the world and its cruelty — whereas Geralt has known it since he was left there on the side of a road nearly a century ago.

Roach crunches through the frost covering the stone road into Oxenfurt, her breath coming to her in great big puffs of white mist. The snow is not so tall around the city, but then again more carts and animals push through it here, melting it and turning it into a black and brown sludge that runs down the gutters and into the river surrounding the walled Academy. Geralt steers her around towards the student and faculty housing nearby, avoiding the roads leading to the marketplace, trying to pick out any familiar scents even after months of not having it surround him every hour of every day.

Lavender and honey. Jaskier is a man of many tastes, but for as long as Geralt has known him, his cologne has never changed. This, at least, Geralt can rely on. 

Cirilla is quiet as he slows Roach. She peeks out of his cloak, careful to keep herself mostly hidden, her own hood pulled up and her hands gripping his where he has her pressed to his chest. Her heartbeat is rabbit-quick in his ear, a staccato beat he fights against following. He needs to find, needs to search for a place where she will be safe — her fear is bearable for now even as it chokes him, always at the back of his mind and always urging his body into motion despite how exhausted he is.

They wander up and down the streets for a while. Oxenfurt is all stone pathways and packed houses, a testament to the wealth the Academy brings to the city. Roach clacks along, and Geralt keeps his nose high, trying not to make it obvious he can smell exactly how many people have walked down this street recently despite it being currently empty. When they’ve wandered down one street, he turns them down another, and they continue searching like that until that lavender and honey scent punches Geralt in the gut, forcing him to stop Roach with a winnie.

“Stay,” he manages, his voice nothing more than a strained growl. He slips from the saddle, keeping Cirilla in place with a hand on her back. She wraps her hands around the horn, blinking in confusion, as he tosses the reins over Roach’s head and begins to follow his nose. The scent is strong, like Jaskier had just been here, and it invigorates him like he hasn’t been in a very long time.

“Who are you looking for?” Cirilla asks quietly. “This friend — what do they look like?”

The image of Jaskier on that mountain, standing above him with an expression of total and complete heartbreak, comes to him unbidden. He’d destroyed Jaskier without meaning it, but even that was still a cruel twist to the knife — he hadn’t meant it, gods he hadn’t, but to call it anything else other than  _ intentional _ was a slight upon the bard he couldn’t bear —

“Tall,” Geralt manages. “Like me. Short brown hair, blue eyes, probably wearing something far too expensive to be walking through this weather.”

He doesn’t say that he wears a smile like it comes to him so naturally, like smiling is what a person’s default expression  _ should  _ be. He doesn’t say that Geralt had destroyed that smile with nothing more than words, that he took the bard in his hands and crushed him because he wasn’t strong enough to face the consequences of his own boar-headed actions. He doesn’t say that Jaskier means more to him than he’s capable of fully understanding, or that there’s been a fundamental part of him missing since he left Jaskier stranded on that gods-damned mountain.

“Is he quite pretty?” Cirilla asks. Geralt blinks and looks back at her.

“I suppose, yes,” he says. “He is pretty.”

Cirilla raises her arm and points ahead of them. “Is that him? He’s the only one wearing blue.”

Geralt turns and follows her finger. There’s a group of women standing on a doorstep, huddled together under an awning to the grand entrance of a large home. It’s facade is covered in glossy windows and there is still some stubborn ivy clinging to its stucco face, however black and spindly it may be. Geralt can hear a man lecturing in front of the group of women, a man he hasn’t heart in six months and who he hadn’t dreamed of finding again after a long, long while.

He is wearing blue. Crisp trousers with a fine sheen of embroidery sewn into intricate patterns tucked into fur-lined boots made of a dark, nearly black leather. His doublet is partially hidden under the thick wool cloak he wears tucked around him, but that is in a dark blue, too, far finer than the ragged ones Geralt keeps mended for himself and Cirilla. He gesticulates to the crowd of women — a group of four — speaking about the finer points of poetry and the merits of brevity even as he rambles on and on and on and on.

Geralt stands there listening to Jaskier’s voice for far longer than he probably should. He missed him, missed him like he was missing a part of himself, and to be so close and so far hurts far more than if he hadn’t seen Jaskier at all. Because he could still turn around, he could still leave Jaskier to the life he should be living, he could never see this bard again and he should be happy for it because Geralt had  _ hurt him — _

“Ah! There you are!”

Jaskier’s voice penetrates the deep fog encompassing Geralt like a beam of light through storm clouds. Geralt looks up and finds those blue eyes trained solely on him, set in a face that is smiling and welcoming. Startled, Geralt points to himself, and Jaskier laughs like he’d just heard the funniest joke ever told.

“Yes, you!” he says. “I was wondering when you would show! Your last letter came rather late, so I was worried you wouldn’t make it before the snows finally set in!”

Oh. Jaskier wants Geralt to pretend — that’s alright, he can do that. 

He bows minutely, just a tip of his chin as he steps closer. The women are looking at him, wide-eyed and with barely-contained curiosity. He’s glad he kept his hair and Cirilla’s covered, but his eyes will give him away if he looks at them directly. So he stares right at Jaskier, even as it hurts, even as everything inside him is screaming for him to turn around and run.

“I apologize,” he manages. “The bird I sent must have gotten lost. Fiona and I — we wanted to stay with you for the winter. She misses you terribly.”

He shoots a look to Cirilla. She nods, and smiles, and plays the part of a niece visiting her favourite uncle perfectly.

“I did miss your singing,” Cirilla says. “The days don’t pass quite so easily without you there to weave tales about them.”

“Well, fear not, my dear Fiona,” Jaskier says with a grand gesture. He turns to the four women on his stoop and bows to them graciously, his smile warm and brilliant. “I’m afraid we will have to continue this conversation when classes resume in the spring — I quite missed seeing my daughter, you see.”

A bolt of heat shoots Geralt, right at the same moment one of the women says, “Of course, Professor Pankrantz.” They turn and leave, trotting up the lane towards the busier side of town, leaving Geralt standing there staring at Jaskier like he’s seeing him for the first time.

Jaskier is staring back, though he is a far sight better than what Geralt must look like. His smile is gone, and he stands with one hand on the handle to the door leading inside and the other perched on his hip. It’s a godsawful mimicry of what they had been on the mountain, Geralt standing below, Jaskier standing above, but this time it wasn’t Jaskier’s heart he was crushing between his hands.

It was his own.

“I think,” Jaskier says, slowly, with purpose, “you know what to say, Geralt of Rivia.”

Geralt swallows down his pride. There is no place for it here anymore. He wants to feel warm like he does with Cirilla — he wants to feel like a part of him has returned. Pieces of himself are missing, and only Jaskier is capable of returning them, and he hopes to the gods that whatever Geralt brings will be enough to have his hands mending him back together.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt says. “For what I said. For how I treated you. It wasn’t fair of me, Jaskier, when you are far more dear to me than my own pride.”

Jaskier’s expression falters. He looks nearly like he will cry, except if he does Geralt isn’t sure he will be strong enough to withstand it. His heart is already broken, even as he wishes Jaskier will fix it just as he is offering to fix the bard’s.

“You understand,” Jaskier finally manages, and oh, he  _ sounds _ like he might cry, “what you did to me. You destroyed me, Geralt.”

Geralt bows his head, but he can’t look away. He refuses to offer even that small amount of disrespect.

“I know. I can only offer my sincerest apologies. I knew what I did the moment the words left my mouth, but I was too prideful to take them back, right then. I don’t expect your forgiveness. But I do apologize, Jaskier. I am here to fix it.”

“And to hide with the Lion Cub of Cintra,” Jaskier says, but his tone is far from patronizing. He’s smiling through the glassy look overtaking his eyes, and with a grand gesture, he reaches out to Cirilla.

“It is a pleasure to finally meet you, my dear,” he says. Cirilla takes his hand, smiling. “You look just like your dear mother.”

“Thank you,” she says. She tosses a glare at Geralt, pinning him to the spot despite being only twelve. “I’m sorry for what Geralt did. But he wanted to see you — it was obvious finding you meant a lot to him, just like protecting me.”

Jaskier gives her hand a squeeze. He looks at Geralt, too, and the forgiveness in his eyes nearly puts Geralt to his knees. He feels warm, like he does with Cirilla, only this encompasses him so fully he doesn’t know how he lived these past six months without Jaskier beside him, bestowing this warmth upon him.

“I forgive you,” Jaskier says. He drops Cirilla’s hand and reaches out, taking Geralt’s face between his warm gloved hands. “You’re a fool for doing what you did — but I understand why. Do it again and much worse will come to you, understand?”

He’s fully capable of understanding what Jaskier may do to him should Geralt misstep again. Jaskier takes up far more room in his heart than he realized, and gutting himself to save face is probably not the worst that will happen should he treat Jaskier poorly in the future. 

Jaskier is far more important to him than he had initially realized, and to accept it is a weight lifted from his shoulders. He nods, and leans into Jaskier’s hands, trying very hard not to show how much the touch and the words mean to him and probably failing quite spectacularly.

“Never again,” he murmurs. It’s a vow, one Jaskier accepts with a smile, and with a flourish, he turns and opens the door to his estate.

——

Once, when Geralt first became a Witcher, Vesemir showed him his own room in Kaer Morhen.

It was up in one of the turrets pushed far to the side of the keep, hidden from view and placed in such a way that the only visible part of the vast yard sprawling underneath it was the training grounds. He was thirty years old and still recovering from the second round through the Trial of the Grasses, barely able to keep himself upright, let alone look around and appreciate that he was finally being given some modicum of privacy. Up until now, he’d been staying in the barracks with the other men that’d made it through the Trial — and so far, it was only three of them.

“This is for your dedication,” Vesemir had said. He’d been looking at Geralt with a strange combination of fondness and guilt, one that Geralt couldn’t properly appreciate then. He’d simply nodded and sat on the bed that was twice the size of the one he had down in the barracks, marvelling for a few short moments at how soft it was.

Vesemir hadn’t said much after that. He had left Geralt alone, and for the first time since he was seven years old, Geralt slept in a room by himself. It was restless sleep, frequently woken by the silence of the keep and the wind rattling the glazing in the patio doors, but somehow he found rest. When he woke, he was alone in a room filled with things he didn’t realize were his until he got up to inspect them.

Because with the others — with the boys that made it, with Eskel and Lambert — it was easy to share. His swords were his, his armor was his, but everything else was shared. There was a chest in the room filled with clothes freshly tailored to him and a desk set aside solely for potion brewing. There were new swords sitting on a rack above the hearth and on a dummy facing the room was his armor, freshly oiled and mended, sitting there out of the way but still in a prominent place between two wrought iron wall sconces

It had been strange. Alien. Being in a room that was his own was completely new territory, and when he tried to return to the barracks that night, he found them empty. Eskel and Lambert had been given rooms, too. They’d all been given privacy, a luxury normally not afforded even when bathing, and for the first time in a long time he was scared.

He left that spring to be released as a fully-trained Witcher. He didn’t come back to Kaer Morhen for a while. The emptiness scared him — the lack of a shared space scared him. He couldn’t say it, couldn’t admit that his entire life had been himself and his brothers and that was that — he couldn’t say that he missed being able to wake up and have someone else there, even when they slept. Kaer Morhen was too big, too empty. Kaer Morhen held only the screams of himself and the boys that never made it, and he didn’t think he could take listening to them in that big room that was supposed to be his bubble of safety from the world.

He wandered. Living by himself with nothing but his horse and his pack and his swords was preferable to living in that big empty space. Having nothing — or close to it — suited him. The pressure of having to fill a space with nothing but himself was terrifying when he’d been nothing but a part of a pack up until the moment Vesemir had opened the door to that dreaded room. There was a simplicity that came with having very little that comforted him, and to go decades without doing more than protecting what he could afford became a way of life he was loath to abandon.

And then he met Jaskier.

Sharing became a part of his life again. It was no longer just himself and Roach. It was no longer possible to stretch rations for weeks at a time by skipping whole days without eating. He had a human to think about, even when that human inserted himself into Geralt’s space without really asking. That familiarity — it was… nice. Geralt would never admit it, but it was.

Finding lute strings in his bag or a half-used bottle of cologne was never an annoyance. Jaskier knew to keep his things out of Geralt’s potion bag — there were far more dangerous things inside it than what he would encounter wandering at the Witcher’s side on most days — but the rest of their packs were an even blend of both their belongings. After a while, it was normal for Geralt to care for things Jaskier had, like mending his boots or guarding his coin purse, and in turn Jaskier made himself useful as well.

He paid attention, for one, to the plants and fungi Geralt needed for potions. Sometimes Geralt would wake and find a basket full of freshly picked wolfsbane. Or, when he wasn’t looking, Jaskier had picked up the ability to sharpen and care for swords, and the next time he checked over them, they wouldn’t be dull from the previous day’s fight. He was an adept trapper, too, and for all that he complained about the great outdoors, a frustrating camping companion he was not.

It was in his nature to be moody and quiet, and maybe he was wrong to be that way when all Jaskier was seeking was companionship. It was clear the bard wanted so desperately to be helpful that Geralt was powerless to stop him even when there were days Jaskier grated on him to the point he nearly screamed — but it wasn’t the bard that annoyed him. His chest constricted when Jaskier sang and his heart gave painful, arresting squeezes when Jaskier fell into his more maudlin moods. He was, up until that fucking mountain, a part of Geralt. 

Walking into his estate made it no more apparent that they weren’t a part of each other anymore, now.

Jaskier is a neat person. His liquor cabinet is organized by the size and color of the bottles, and the shiny floorboards are covered in meticulously swept rugs showing neither their age or wear from being walked over. There are a pair of swords over the hearth in the sitting room, a pair that Geralt recognizes as very old Witcher swords, twin wolf heads howling at each other on the pommel of the silver one. In one corner of the sitting room is a desk with sheet music and notebooks stacked on top of it, and leaning beside it, on a cushion far finer than one should leave on the floor, is Jaskier’s lute, its neck and body shining with the recent attention Jaskier must have paid it with a rag and oil.

His estate smells like him. Like honey and lavender and wood oil, with the faint sharp tang of ink and pressed paper. The estate is two stories, and quickly Jaskier leads them up to the second floor where a hallway is lined with three doorways. Paintings and stuffed animals line the walls, also unfamiliar to Geralt, unused as he is to being in spaces not his own. Beside one door, close to the top of the stairs, is another Witcher sword. This one is alone, separated from its silver twin, a sad lonely life it must live on the wall without its partner.

“I found them at an auction a month ago,” Jaskier says. Geralt flicks his gaze away, meeting Jaskier’s over the top of Cirilla’s head. His eyes are amused, a small smile quirking his lips. “I couldn’t very well let them go to someone who wouldn’t appreciate them.”

“We can go,” Geralt says. His heart hurts as he says it, but he means it. “If this is too much — I don’t want to intrude —“

“Geralt,” Jaskier says softly, yet with a tone that halts whatever misgivings Geralt may project on him. “We’ll talk soon. Let’s get the Princess into a bath for now, hm?”

The sigh of relief from Cirilla is one that nearly makes Geralt smile. “Please! I haven’t seen a bath since that very nice woman took me into her home near Sodden.”

“Then you’ll be happy to know that this home is equipped with its very own hearth in the bathroom,” Jaskier says. He pushes open the door at the end of the hall, revealing a large wooden tub sitting on a plush rug. Next to it is a hearth banked low with embers, and all around on the walls are more paintings and stuffed birds. A vanity sits next to a window, the bottles and soaps organized neatly, and Cirilla bounces into the room happily.

“I’ll find you something suitable, then return shortly,” Jaskier says. “Feel free to take your time.”

He closes the door behind him, leaving Geralt and Cirilla alone. She turns on him almost instantly, a concerned look marring her fine features.

“You trust him?” she whispers. 

Geralt lowers himself to his knees. She isn’t much taller than he is when he’s this low, looking down at him with those eyes that see too much and understand very little. He wants to protect her, and already he is scaring her.

“I trust him with far more than my life,” Geralt says quietly. He raises his hands and unbuttons her cloak, folding it over his arm to get cleaned. He is hesitant to offer her comfort, but she wraps her arms around his shoulders as if the thought had never occurred to her. 

“Will he hide us all winter?”

Geralt hugs her tight, squeezing her to him in the hopes that she understands far more than he’s saying. “He will not reveal us. Don’t worry, Princess. We’re safe here.”

Jaskier steps around them, startling Geralt. He hadn’t heard the door open — he hadn’t heard Jaskier at all. Already he is growing used to the safety Jaskier provides, but instead of frightening him, it brings only comfort. 

“I have some things a niece of mine left here,” Jaskier says. He sets a folded pile of clothes on a small table beside the bath, the garments made of fine teal silk with birds sewn into the skirt. “She is about your age — I hope they fit.”

“I didn’t know you had a niece,” Geralt says as he stands. 

“I have three sisters. They had children before me. Not that I will, anyway, but I enjoy seeing them from time to time.”

Jaskier tosses a few logs onto the dying fire, and with a twitch of his fingers, Geralt brings it to life. Jaskier gives him a raised eyebrow, smiling, as he turns back around. 

“Thank you,” Cirilla says. She bows, but Jaskier tsks, and she stands with a bemused grin. “I do appreciate it, sir.”

“Jaskier,” Jaskier says. “Don’t call me sir. I really can’t stand being reminded that I age.”

“But you don’t look a day over thirty!” Cirilla says. Jaskier bats his eyelashes, a quite pretty display that makes Geralt’s stomach clench. 

“Thank you, my dear! But please. Don’t let us keep you — we shall be downstairs when you’re finished. Take your time.”

Geralt follows Jaskier out of the bathroom and into the room at the top of the stairs, the one with a Witcher sword hanging on the wall beside it. Jaskier’s scent is strongest here, in this room where he obviously sleeps and cares for himself. The bed is large, with plush pillows and covers, with two bedside tables flanking it. The wardrobe is a tall dark-paneled mahogany, and beside it sits a standing mirror of polished silver. There are more quintessentially  _ Jaskier _ things here, like another lute sitting on the foot of the bed and an array of doublets sitting out on the chest at the foot of the bed, obviously left there when Jaskier was getting dressed that day. 

But there are more odd things here, too. An empty armor rack sits in one corner of the room, next to a bedside table and in the grey light coming in from the window behind it. A glass case hangs on the wall across from the bed containing a set of finely crafted daggers, and underneath it is a desk filled with books and papers pressing dried flowers between their pages. Many of them are poisonous, and nearly all of them are ingredients for Witcher potions.

Another painful clench wraps around Geralt’s heart, holding him right there on the spot. He turns to Jaskier, realizing for the first time that while Jaskier had injected himself into nearly every part of Geralt’s life, Geralt had done the same to him, too. 

Jaskier is watching him with a hand on his hip and a sad smile on his lips. He meets Geralt’s look without an inch taken or surrendered, and now, standing in his home with the evidence of a life moving on without him, Geralt doesn’t think he could challenge such a look anyway. 

“I want you to understand,” Jaskier starts softly, “how much you meant to me.”

The swords. The daggers. The armor rack and the pressed flowers — 

“I didn’t know,” Geralt says. He did, probably. In some deep part of himself he didn’t want to acknowledge all those months ago. “I am truly sorry.”

“I hope for this little girl’s sake that you’ve changed.”

Jaskier doesn’t say it with anything close to anger or resentment, but Geralt can smell it anyway, and it makes him feel vaguely ill.

“I did,” Geralt says. “But I did it for you, too. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

Jaskier steps closer. That sad look is going away, but it isn’t gone yet. “And?”

“And I would like you to stay,” Geralt murmurs. Jaskier takes another step, and Geralt can see it — the both of them on the road again, sharing space and existence, like they had been. Like they should be. It feels wrong being apart, and only now does he feel complete. Whole. 

Jaskier stops right in front of him. He’s smiling still, but it isn’t hurt or sad anymore. He’s smiling like he’s seeing Geralt for the first time, like back in Posada all those years ago. He raises his hands and begins untying Geralt’s cloak and armor, falling into a familiar, comforting routine that has spanned decades now.

“All you had to do was ask,” Jaskier says. “But this time, Geralt — save the yelling for someone who deserves it.”

“You never did.” 

Jaskier’s grin is wry. “That’s the right answer, Geralt. My how you have grown.”

Geralt wants so badly to lean forward and close the distance — he wants so badly to give in to the ache he feels growing in his heart. He hurt Jaskier and yet here the man is, stepping back into his life as if he hadn’t left him shattered. It’s amazing and soul-destroying all at once, but he stops himself.

“Thank you,” he says. That has to be enough. It has to be. To encompass all that he is — he hopes it’s enough. 

“Of course, darling,” Jaskier says. The armor comes away, and while Geralt feels vulnerable, it doesn’t scare him. He could stand nude in front of Jaskier and feel nothing but calm acceptance. “Now please — let’s get you bathed as well.”

He lets Jaskier undress him. There’s a bath he didn’t see in the back corner of the room, and in only four bucketfuls from the hearth downstairs it’s full. Geralt lowers himself into it, and for the first time since leaving Kaer Morhen as a freshly released Witcher does he feel like the world finally makes sense. Himself, his child surprise, and his bard are safe — and there isn’t much more he could ask for to please him.

——

He wakes to the sound of breathing against his ear.

Once upon a time, this would concern him. Waking with Yennefer usually meant waking far after she’d left, even on the good days. She’d tried to be tender, and most days she was, but she struggled with showing affection freely. It was hard for her to be genuine even when alone, and only Cirilla was able to bring out the softest parts of her, long after Geralt had broken her heart and his own.

That isn’t to say he disliked being with Yennefer. He did. He still loves her — she is his first love, and she probably will always be. There would always be a place for her beside him, and to co-parent with her is destiny’s greatest blessing.

She’s a great mother. Their time apart has come, but he couldn’t have asked for someone better than Yennefer for Ciri. 

But to wake in bed with her, on the days she stayed, usually found them embracing loosely. She didn’t cuddle, and to be honest, Geralt wasn’t one for it either, back then. Her hands were kind on him, graced him with their soft touch even before waking, but to hear her breathe any closer than a sigh across his cheek was rare.

This is different.

The room had gone cold some time during the night as the fire died, making gooseflesh rise across his uncovered forearm. He doesn’t have the energy to roll over and cast  _ igni _ , so he tugs up the blankets, curling his arms tighter around the body resting partially atop his. The body moves, and sighs, and Geralt feels the tickle of breath against his ear again. 

“Too early,” Jaskier complains. His voice is rough and thick, a far sight from the musical tenor it is during the day. It makes Geralt smile.

“Then sleep,” Geralt murmurs. “We aren’t going anywhere.”

Jaskier turns his face into Geralt’s neck, grumbling. His breath tickles here, too, making Geralt huff a quiet laugh. Jaskier squirms, getting more comfortable, his long limbs clinging to Geralt like vices as he finds the strength to. Geralt returns the embrace, turning to kiss Jaskier’s ear, raising his other hand to sweep across the bard’s hip and side. His skin is warm, and he shivers as Geralt’s hand rises up around his ribcage.

Jaskier settles after that, dropping off into sleep again. It surprises Geralt how quickly he’s able to, even in places like this: in a cold, damp room and a cramped bed meant for one man, not one man and a Witcher. But he supposes all that matters is that he’s warm and comfortable, safe and sated, and really he can’t ask for much more.

The minutes tick by as he lies there, listening to Jaskier breathe. He angles himself enough to cast  _ igni _ on the dead fire, springing it to life for now as it eats at its own ashes. The room warms up, the light turns grey with the rise of the sun, and as it does, he feels Jaskier begin to wake on his own, a slow process that takes nearly an hour.

And then Jaskier sighs, an expansion of precious breath against Geralt’s side, the first real step into wakefulness. He is not graceful, is far from the romanticism the bard is fond of writing into his poetry. He stretches, joints popping and groaning, then wraps his arms around Geralt tighter as if clinging to him will keep the coming day from slipping its warm fingers around his ribcage like Geralt does, pulling him into the land of the living.

“Why did I agree to come to this godsforsaken party,” Jaskier sighs. His breath is warm against Geralt’s ear, as are his lips as he speaks.

Geralt holds him closer, skating his palms down the smooth expanse of his back. “Because I asked nicely.”

“Mm, still up for debate.”

“I also remember mentioning that they requested a certain bard,” Geralt continues. He smiles at Jaskier’s groan, turning his face to kiss Jaskier’s ear. “Come — let me warm you up.”

“You better mean a bath, because I’m still sore, you absolute ass.”

Geralt rolls them over, pressing Jaskier into the bed. He hums his reply, meaning to sit up and do as he’s bid, but Jaskier keeps clinging to him. He very well can’t say no to that, either, so he spends a long while pressing kisses to the warm skin underneath him, kissing up and down Jaskier’s neck, his chest, under his jaw and chin. It’s a long journey to his lips, but it’s one that makes Jaskier laugh, so by the time he gets to where he is most wanted, he can’t really complain.

“I’ll be just a moment,” Geralt murmurs. Jaskier makes a face, leaning up to kiss him once more, then finally releases him. He burrows into the blankets when Geralt leaves, becoming nothing more than a lump underneath them to stave off the cold. 

Geralt feeds the fire, then pulls on his shirt and trousers to go draw water from the spigot outside. The rest of the inn is asleep, but then again, it would be — Jaskier had stayed up late entertaining the crowds, and even later between Geralt’s hands, breathing far finer songs than the ones he sings for the public.

He heats the water over the hearth, then dumps it into the bath he paid extra to be brought up to them the evening before. It takes four trips, and by the time he goes to pick up Jaskier out of bed, he feels warmer than the morning air, startling the bard when he slips his hands underneath the blankets.

“It’s  _ cold! _ ” Jaskier shouts. Geralt snorts — he picks him up effortlessly, holding him close before lowering him into the steaming water. 

Jaskier shoots him a wounded look. “You could have woken me like a normal person.”

“I let you seep in,” Geralt says. Jaskier leers as he undresses again, watching him with heavy lids. Geralt doesn’t know what he thinks he’s seeing — Geralt is mangled and scarred beyond what he would consider a pretty picture — but he cocks a hip before slipping into the bath behind Jaskier.

“But I need my beauty sleep!” 

Geralt presses a wet kiss to Jaskier’s shoulder. “You’re beautiful enough. We have time to spare, but we also have to move, Jask.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to keep going,” Jaskier mumbles. He takes up the bar of soap on the bath’s edge anyway, lathering it up and beginning to scrub himself.

“We promised,” Geralt says. “So we’re going.”

Jaskier sighs, put upon. Geralt plucks the soap from his hands, lathering it between his palms and resuming where Jaskier had left off.

“I suppose this is payment enough,” Jaskier says. There’s a smile in his voice — Geralt kisses him again, a silent thank-you pressed to the soft skin underneath his ear.

They bathe quietly. When Geralt finishes, he hands off the soap, letting Jaskier take up washing him in return. He’s still sore from the day before, the wounds in his shoulder still weeping blood from a lucky swipe the wraith had taken at him.  _ Yrden  _ had done enough to keep Jaskier safe, so he was able to stitch it closed right after it happened, though they came out some time during the night. Jaskier is careful to dab at it, and Geralt hides a wince when water drips too deep into the wound. Jaskier kisses him for the trouble, then moves on to his hair.

This, too, is achieved quietly, and when they're finished, Geralt lifts them both out of the bath. The fire has heated the room enough to where Jaskier doesn’t shiver when the air touches his water-warm skin, so Geralt leaves him standing on the rug to drip before fetching one of the few clean towels left in the chest at the foot of the bed. When they’re dried, they dress, and Jaskier helps Geralt into his armor with a quiet devotion borne from many years of doing this small thing that he needn’t feel the urge to.

“You always do this for me,” Geralt says quietly. He watches as Jaskier expertly tightens a few knots at Geralt’s side, making sure the chestpiece fits over him just right. He’s been doing this for so long Geralt is sure he doesn’t need to check, but the kindness of doing it is far more warming than doing it itself.

Jaskier quirks a careful brow. “And where would we be, my dear, if I hadn’t?”

“I mean I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive.”

“And I mean that our hearts wouldn’t be quite so intertwined if I hadn’t been. Though I’m loath to attribute a simple task to where we are now, I do like thinking that doing the simple things helps build a sturdy foundation in a relationship, don’t you?”

It’s Geralt’s turn to quirk a brow. Jaskier proves his point by fastening a tie without looking at it, doing so with touch alone. He takes a half step back, his palms resting on the studded surface of Geralt’s chest, the look he fixes on the Witcher daring him to argue.

Geralt can’t help but bend to that look. “I suppose you’re right. But it isn’t just the little things.”

“No, you’re right, too,” Jaskier cedes. “But don’t think I don’t notice the small things you do, too, Geralt. The brand new lute strings and the ink pots and the notebooks — you’re a sentimental man, the gods damn the legends of cold Witcher hearts.”

Geralt snorts. He leans down, and Jaskier reaches up to meet him. Their heights are scant inches apart, the press of their lips always a warm comfort.

“Then I won’t argue,” Geralt says when they part.

“A thank you would do, you know.” Jaskier pouts.

“Thank you,” Geralt says. Jaskier responds by lifting his sword harness over his head, allowing Geralt to slip his arm through. This strap is tightened by the bard’s hands as well, carefully pulled into its well-worn place like every other morning this routine is followed. Jaskier smiles at him, then kisses Geralt’s medallion before stepping back.

“Then I suppose we should be off,” Jaskier says. “Yennefer doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Geralt tilts his head. She doesn’t — and he’s quite certain that if they take any longer, they won’t make it to Velen in time for the party she’s asked (threatened) them to attend. But then he takes a deep breath and smells Jaskier’s cologne — lavender and honey, combined with the oatmeal scent of the soap. His hair is still damp and curly from the bath, and as the room continues to warm, his cheeks begin to flush with blood rising to his face.

He sheds his harness with a quick shrug of his shoulder. His sword clatters to the floor, and with it comes Jaskier yelping to scoop it up and lean it against the stone hearth.

“Geralt!” Jaskier chides. He picks up a vambrace Geralt tosses aside, then shoots him a dirty look. “What in Melitele’s name are you doing?”

Geralt drops the rest of his armor, left only in his shirt and trousers and boots, then scoops Jaskier up. The skin under his jaw is just as warm as he smells, and Geralt presses his face into it, revelling in the strong scent of him here.

“Yennefer can wait,” he rumbles. He feels Jaskier’s arms tighten around his shoulders, and then his thighs close around his hips.

“You’re impossible,” Jaskier sighs into his ear. But then he relaxes, and Geralt takes it for affirmation it is. He presses Jaskier back into the bed, burrowing them both underneath the covers, revelling in the bard’s hands combing through his hair and down his shoulders, pressing into old and aching scars. They wiggle out of their clothes and for a long time don’t leave that bed, spending far more time inside its cramped space than they should, and yet Geralt can’t find it in himself to care. He turns his mouth onto Jaskier’s and kisses the smile right off his lips, swallowing the laugh that rumbles up his throat when he does.

“Let it just be you and me for a while,” Geralt hums. Jaskier’s fingers find an especially hard knot, and with a hard press of his hand, it disappears. Geralt groans as the tension melts from between his shoulder blades. 

“I think,” Jaskier says, his lips pressed to Geralt’s jaw, “we can manage that.”

_ Home _ , Geralt realizes.  _ Home _ had been what he had been searching for back then, way back when he was just thirty years old and a Witcher for just as long. 

That room had scared him — that room that Vesemir had just given him. It wasn’t home, wasn’t the swift and easy camaraderie that came from sharing a space that was neither his nor anyone else’s. It wasn’t shared beds or camp fires, mixed belongings and the easy care of dressing or undressing someone. It wasn’t the knowledge that if he turned his back, someone else was there watching, or the comfort that came from knowing the presence with him was someone he could trust. It took a long time for him to come back to that room in Kaer Morhen — to accept it — but it took him even longer to realize that the reason why he couldn’t do it in the beginning was because of this.

This — Jaskier — the safety of love and familiarity. Of knowing that he could put himself in this man’s hands and survive should he be hurt. His body contained far more scars mended closed by Jaskier’s careful fingers then it didn’t, and only now does he see why he doesn’t feel the pain from them anymore.

Home. It had fled him, for a while, when he refused to accept it. When he had chased Jaskier from his life, when he had ruined Yennefer and abandoned Ciri. Home wasn’t a place — wasn’t a room or a thing or a collection of things —

It was here. It was with Ciri. It was in the knowledge that his family was scattered to the winds but always reachable, always within his grasp. And right now, it was here, and he sighs into Jaskier’s skin and holds him as tightly as he can. Jaskier hugs him back, and Geralt hopes that, in the press of their bodies and the kiss he leaves over the bard’s fluttering heart, that he understands the lengths Geralt will go to always find his way back to this embrace.


End file.
